---

Each year the global prominence of China in economics and culture increases. China's cultural presence is so large today that it is hard to imagine that the first major presentation of Chinese art outside China was in the 1993 exhibition China's New Art, Post 1989, which was followed by the 1998 exhibition Inside Out: New Chinese Art.

Jiang Jian
Zhao Lanying, 74, Hui County,
Henan, 1997

Bates College is proud to be a leader in supporting the emerging field of Chinese contemporary art. Documenting China: Contemporary Photography and Social Change was one of three such exhibitions, including the site-specific Xu Bing: Calligraphy for the People and Wenda Gu: From Middle Kingdom to Biological Millennium presented at the Bates College Museum of Art.

Working with internationally renowned curator of photography Gu Zheng on this exhibition, the Museum generos donations from artists Zhou Hai, Jiang Jian, Zhou Ming, Liu Xiaodi, Zhang Xinmin, Luo Yongjin, and Lu Yuanmin.

This exhibition represented a unique moment in the history of China. It is a magnificent visual representation of a culture shifting and turning as it negotiates its local and global role in the 21st century.