[continued]
These programs are carried out with Chinese institutions, ranging from overarching super-agencies of the central government to local primary schools, and have included participants from policy-makers on culture to young artists in provincial towns.
Provincial and municipal bureaus of culture… provide much information that helps us plan on a local or regional level.
An agreement with the [China] Federation [of Literary and Art Circles] brought the Center into regular contact with many of the member associations on projects.
The Center’s constant contact with the key people at these associations, and with leaders at the professional schools, orchestras, and theaters, serves as the backbone for the Center’s evaluation of project needs and as resource for consultation on their design.
The results of the Center's programs in China over the past ten years have been both deep and broad. A new wave of composers, playwrights, and visual artists, most of whom have had contact with the Center, has emerged with lightning speed over the past three years. These artists have fundamentally changed the profile of their disciplines in China, while attracting considerable international attention.
During its initial years, the Center carried out an ambitious program to make contemporary music scores, recordings, and publications, as well as materials in other disciplines, broadly available in China. All visiting performers and teachers sent by the Center were asked to emphasize contemporary and American music.
In playwriting [sic], the Chinese production of “Death of a Salesman” in the spring of 1983, directed by Arthur Miller himself, was doubtless the catalyst for the sudden emergence of a contemporary spoken theater. In the year following this production, which was characterized in China as “the most significant cultural event to take place since the Cultural Revolution,” over 150 new plays were written… As in the case of musical compositions, once the artistic floodgates were raised, there was no turning back.
The same can be said of the visual artists… Intensive exploration eventually culminated in a provocative exhibit in 1987 of recent oil and ink paintings from centers of visual arts activity — Shanghai, Nanjing, and Hangzhou — entitled “Beyond the Open Door.”
In the performing arts… the Center’s emphasis has been on presentation and management. For example, the Center was deeply involved for several years in the modernization of the two leading orchestras [Central Philharmonic Orchestra in Beijing and Shanghai Symphony]in China.