Seeing Beijing in New York

As Beijing prepares to host this summer’s Olympic Games, its archives bureau is working to shape the image of the city in the international eye. For the first time, the Beijing City Archive Bureau has released photographs from its collection for display outside of China. In a show now on view at the gallery at the China Institute in Midtown, historical photographs mingle with contemporary work by 20 photographers of the Beijing City Photographers Association in “Beijing 2008: A Photographic Journey.”The show includes contemporary images of architectural sites such as Sir Norman Foster’s Terminal 3 at the Beijing Capital International Airport, Rem Koolhaas’s CCTV headquarters, and Herzog & de Meuron’s National Stadium, which will host the opening and closing ceremonies of the Olympic Games, alongside images of the same locations as they existed in the 1930s, as well as images of the 15th-century Forbidden City.The China Institute is a nonprofit organization whose major donors include both the State Department’s Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs and a subdivision of the Chinese Ministry of Education known as the Hanban. Both organizations contributed between $100,000 and $250,000 to the institute in 2006-07, according to the institute’s 2007 annual report. The chairman of its board of trustees, Virginia Kamsky, is the founder and chairman of the first foreign investment firm approved to operate in China, Kamsky Associates, Inc.The genesis of “Beijing 2008” came last April, during a visit by China Institute gallery director Willow Hai Chang to Beijing. In her travels, Ms. Hai Chang viewed a photography exhibition about the history of Beijing’s financial district, Xi Jiao Min Xiang, presented by the Beijing City Archive Bureau. Ms. Hai Chang had already toyed with the idea of curating a show for the China Institute pegged to Beijing’s hosting of the Olympics.“We wanted to do something to introduce Beijing and introduce the Olympic Games, but we were looking for partners for the artwork,” she said. “Our concept was to focus on the architecture, but we needed to find whoever had a connection [to the historical photographs].”The person with the best connection, it turned out, was Ms. Hai Chang herself. Impressed with the bureau’s stockpile of historical photography, Ms. Hai Chang pursued permission to borrow some of its collection. The bureau had never before released either its historical photographs or work by its contemporary photographers, who operate under the bureau-run Beijing City Photographers Association.So Ms. Hai Chang pulled some strings, calling in a favor to a college classmate of hers at Nanjing University, the director of the State Archives Administration, Yang Dongquan. With Mr. Dongquan’s blessing, the director of the Beijing City Archives Bureau, Chen Liren, began work on the international collaboration with Ms. Hai Chang, sorting through the bureau’s historical collection until both sides could agree on the selections. “All of the photos needed to go through approval on several levels,” Ms. Hai Chang said. “I killed something, they killed something, and eventually we went back and forth until we met.”For “Beijing 2008: A Photographic Journey,” the China Institute gallery received financial assistance from the Beijing City Archive Bureau, which contributed $12,000 toward the show’s installation costs, and from a New York-based investment and brokerage firm, Brean Murray, Carret & Co., which donated $25,000 in general assistance. Brean Murray, Carret & Co., which maintains an office in Beijing, conducts a significant portion of its business in China, where it invests in small- and mid-cap companies.“We hope this exhibition provides an overview of Beijing — to further an understanding of Chinese culture through the old and new architecture of the city — and its history, enormous changes, and hope for China’s future,” Ms. Liren wrote in an e-mail message. “Each generation seeks a better life — and part of this process included destroying the old to make room for the new. The question is now — as China’s standard of living improves — will the new architecture suit us and provide us with the tools for a better life?”

Seeing Beijing in New York

Seeing Beijing in New York

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