Review
An Enduring Exchange
The arts education exchange program with China, jointly sponsored by the Chinese Ministry of Culture, the Chinese State Education Commission, and the Center, completed its sixth year in the summer of 1986. The idea of a reciprocal research project on arts education was developed in 1980 during a visit by the first Center-sponsored Chinese arts delegation to the United States. Talks that year between Chou Wen-chung, director of the Center, and delegation leader Lin Mohan, then Vice Minister of Culture, led to a 1982 arts education conference in China. In the summer of 1984, the Rockefeller Brothers Fund gave grants totaling almost $500,000 to the Center and Harvard Project Zero, directed by Dr. Howard Gardner, ensuring continuation of the project for three more years. The Chinese government funds the Chinese side of the project.
In the 1984-85 program year, delegations were exchanged, and in 1985-86 each country was host to a research team of educators specializing in music. Yu Runyang, professor of musicology and deputy director of Beijing’s Central Conservatory, and Ru Jie, theory teacher and principal of the Shanghai Conservatory’s affiliated middle school, spent three months in the United States last spring. At almost the same time Bennett Reimer and Lyle Davidson traveled in China for three months. Reimer is professor of music and director of the Center for the Study of Education and the Musical Experience at Northwestern University, and Davidson is professor of music theory at the New England Conservatory of Music.
Both teams spent a great deal of time traveling, observing, collecting data, and discussing music education. They visited schools and institutions, where they observed music classes and talked with their counterparts about instruction, techniques, philosophy, goals, and administration.
In the United States, the Chinese team focused on music education at the pre-professional level. The Center arranged for the professors to spend two weeks each at Columbia University’s department of music. The Juilliard School, La Guardia High School of Music and the Arts, and the Manhattan School of Music. At each of the schools, they attended performances and rehearsals and met with students, parents, teachers, and administrators. At Columbia, Yu and Ru lectured on music education in China. The Center also arranged for the professors to meet Americans in informal settings such as private homes. In addition, Yu and Ru did some sightseeing, attended several concerts and ballets, and saw the Broadway musicals The Big River and 42nd Street.
During their nearly three months in New York City, the Chinese educators visited City College of the City University of New York and Horace Mann School in Riverdale. They also made one- or two-day visits to the Yale University music department, the West Hartford Public Schools, and the Hartt School of Music in Connecticut; the music department at Harvard University; and Curtis Institute in Philadelphia. After a few days in Washington, D. C., they flew to California, where they visited the department of music at Berkeley and toured the Bay Area before returning to China.
In China, Reimer and Davidson traveled to Beijing, Xi’an, Chengdu, and Shenyang. The trip, which was planned and coordinated by the Ministry of Culture, included visits to the major conservatories in each city as well as to primary, middle, and secondary schools; teachers colleges; children’s arts centers, called “children’s palaces;” dance and opera academies; and other cultural agencies.
Their most satisfying experiences came from teaching, where they had close contact with students and teachers. In all the cities they visited, Davidson taught classes in counterpoint and ear training, while Reimer lectured on topics such as music as an aesthetic experience; they both presented lecture/ demonstrations on music education in the United States. They also took on unexpected assignments such as coaching a piano student in Chengdu who was learning to play Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue.”
The Chinese researchers concluded that Chinese children have a greater sense of discipline and, in some cases, greater mastery of technique and method than their American counter parts. On the other hand, they found that American children have a greater sense of initiative, spontaneity, and individual expression than children in their own country. The American team’s observations are being formulated in reports that will be circulated among arts educators in 1987-88.
Two more sets of exchanges in 1986-87 complete the program. Barbara Carlisle and Carma Hinton, both visual arts specialists, went to China in the fall of 1986; Howard Gardner and Ellen Winner, who are early childhood arts education specialists, spent three months in China during the spring of 1987. The music educators Xin Guoliu and Zhu Zeping were in the United States in the fall of 1986, and fine arts teachers Chen Shoupeng and Hou Ling spent the spring of 1987 in the United States. (These 1986-87 exchanges will be described in our next newsletter.) Planning is now under way for a binational, culminating conference in 1988.
The Event of the Year
Strictly speaking, they may not be considered artists, but the fifty-six Chinese children who performed with Jacques d’Amboise and more than 1,500 American schoolchildren at the Felt Forum in Madison Square Garden were cultural ambassadors of the highest order. D’Amboise, formerly a principal dancer with the New York City Ballet, first approached the Center nearly three years ago with the ambitious idea of bringing a large number of Chinese children to New York to participate in his annual “Event of the Year”—which, in 1986, also marked the tenth anniversary celebration of the National Dance Institute. By the following summer, agreement with the Chinese was reached. In May of 1986 the children, whom d’Amboise had auditioned and rehearsed in Beijing, left their families for the three-week visit to the United States.

Accompanied by fifteen adults, including the former deputy mayor of Beijing, Bai Jiefu, the children, ages eight to thirteen, made friends and charmed people everywhere they went— Disneyland in California, Washington, D. C., and New York City, where Mayor Ed Koch treated them to a picnic of hot dogs and ice cream at Gracie Mansion.
The 1986 “Event of the Year,” titled “China Dig,” was held at Madison Square Garden on June 1 and 2. Along with the Chinese and American children, the show also featured Cloris Leachman, who performed in a dance called “Phoenix Nest,” and New York City policemen as themselves. The American children played hard-hatted kids who excavate through the earth to China, where they are met by the Chinese children, all singing and dancing and playing traditional Chinese instruments in a grand finale.
Chinese Artists in America
Artist and Teacher
Two artists from Shanghai, Shen Roujian and Meng Guang, spent four weeks during October and November 1985 in the United States. Shen, vice chairman of the Shanghai branch of the Chinese Artists’ Association, is well known and respected for his prints, oil paintings, and traditional Chinese ink drawings. Because of his avid interest in recent developments in American art, the high points of his stay were visits to museums and galleries in New York, Boston, Washington, D. C., and San Francisco.

Meng, much revered professor to a generation of artists at the Shanghai University School of Fine Arts, counts among his former students Chen Yifei, who was responsible for the one month visit. In addition to touring museums and galleries, Meng had lively discussions with teachers at many American schools and departments of art, including the National Academy of Design School and Columbia’s Division of Painting and Sculpture.
The visit of Meng and Shen laid the groundwork for many future exchanges, including an April 1987 exhibit. Beyond the Open Door: Contemporary Paintings from the People’s Republic of China, organized by Center Advisory Council member Waldemar A. Nielsen (see next newsletter for details).
Chinese – American Writers’ Conference
UCLA’s third annual Chinese- American Writers’ Conference took place on the California campus in May 1986, with noted historian Harrison Salisbury, a member of the Center’s Advisory Council, acting as host to the delegation from the Chinese Writers’ Association (CWA). At Salisbury’s request, the Center planned a symposium at Columbia for the Chinese group’s subsequent visit to New York.
American writers attending the informal one-day meeting were Arthur Miller and Kenneth Koch (who visited China under the Center’s auspices) and Allen Ginsberg. Other participants were photographer Inge Morath; Marsha Wagner, librarian of the C. V. Starr East Asian Library at Columbia; Stephan Salisbury, who filled in for his father who had to leave for a conference in the Soviet Union; and Robert Towers, chairman of the Writing Division at Columbia’s School of the Arts, who was the moderator.
Included in the twelve-member Chinese delegation were novelist Zhang Jie; Tang Dacheng, secretary general of the CWA; and Deng Youmei, deputy secretary general of the Association.
In a day of frank and lively discussions, the writers spoke about literary trends in their societies and the urgent need for more and better translations of contemporary Chinese and American literature.
Dancers’ Association Delegation
Eager to learn about American dance, a delegation from the Chinese Dancers’ Association spent a week in New York in March of 1986, on the way back to China from conferences in Canada. The Center arranged for You Huihai, vice chairman of the Association; Jia Meina, a teacher of traditional dance at the Beijing Dance Academy; and Huang Aiping, an interpreter for the China Federation of Literary and Art Circles, to attend dance classes, rehearsals, and performances at The Juilliard School, the Nikolais/Louis Foundation for Dance, the School of American Ballet, the Alvin Ailey Company, Eliot Feld’s New Ballet School, the Merce Cunningham Company, and the National Dance Institute.
The very busy week also included sightseeing; attending the Broadway musical 42nd Street and the film White Nights; and meeting with Genevieve Oswald, curator of the Dance Collection of the Lincoln Center Library and Museum for the Performing Arts. Oswald, who had visited China and was aware of China’s need for resource materials on dance, presented many books and concert programs to the delegation.
The delegation’s visit yielded an unexpected bonus—just over three months later two members of the Merce Cunningham Company went to China for two weeks of teaching, lecturing, and performing with the Dance- Drama Company of the China National Opera and China’s Dance-Drama Theatre.
Center Assists Chinese Artists
In the program year 1985-86, many Chinese artists were assisted by the Center during their visits to the United States under the auspices of other organizations. In November, novelists Feng Jicai and Zhang Xianliang, members of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Congress, spent a week in New York before attending the Iowa Writers’ Conference. During their New York visit they discussed recent trends in contemporary Chinese fiction and future exchanges of writers with Center representatives. That same month a high-level delegation of Chinese cultural officials, led by Yu Wen, Presidium member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, met with Center director Chou Wen-chung to discuss the importance of understanding cultural differences to the success of international exchanges. Zhang Qijun, secretary general of the Jiangsu branch of the China International Culture Exchange Centre, met with Chou Wen-chung in January 1986, to discuss professional arts exchanges with Jiangsu province. Shanghai writers Wang Xiaoying and Cheng Naishan visited the United States in February under the auspices of the United States Information Agency and spoke with other young fiction writers, magazine editors, and publishers. Also in February, the Center arranged for composers Du Mingxin and Wang Jianzhong to visit Columbia’s Music Division and Electronic Music Center. The Chinese composers gave an informal presentation as part of the Columbia Composers’ Colloquium series. In June, the Center arranged for special tours of the Guggenheim Museum and galleries in Soho and Greenwich Village for artist and art critic Yu Feng, who visited the United States after attending meetings in Europe.
Awards to Center “Alumni”
The 1986 Award of Merit Medal for poetry was given to Kenneth Koch by the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters. Koch, who is a poet and professor of English and comparative literature at Columbia, spent a month in China under Center auspices in the spring of 1984 teaching poetry writing to children and meeting with Chinese poets.
Last fall, novelist E. L. Doctorow received an American Book Award for his bestselling novel World’s Fair. The Center sponsored Doctorow’s visit to China in October 1983, during which he met and discussed literature and the profession of writing with many Chinese writers.
American Artists In China
NTD Tours China
The first Chinese tour by a Western theater company was special not only because it was a first: the company that took on this challenge is composed mostly of deaf actors. After a year-and-a-half of negotiations with China by the Center, the National Theatre of the Deaf toured Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Nanjing, and Hangzhou for three weeks in April and May of 1986.
Using sign language, together with mime and narration by both Chinese and English-speaking actors, the twelve-member company presented In the Grove, a play by Ryunosuke Akutagawa, adapted from the Japanese medieval tale of murder that was also the basis for Rashomon; Farewell My Lovely, a comic piece based on an essay by E. B. White about a man enamored of his model-T Ford; and dramatizations of poems written by American schoolchildren. According to Liu Housheng, executive director of the Chinese Theatre Association, which invited the NTD, opening night was a “great hit” and all the performances drew large and enthusiastic audiences.
David Hays, artistic director of the Tony Award-winning company, hopes to find deaf actors in China who will train with the NTD in America with the aim of creating a full-scale theater company of the deaf in China.
Cunningham Dancers in Beijing
When members of the Chinese Dancers’ Association visited New York in March of 1986, the Center sparked an interest in American modern dance by taking them to visit the Merce Cunningham Dance Company, the Nikolais/Louis Foundation for the Dance, and the Alvin Ailey Company. About three months later, Alan Good and Patricia Lent of the Cunningham company were welcomed in Beijing by the Dancers’ Association. There they taught, lectured, and performed with the Dance-Drama Company of the China National Opera and the Dance-Drama Theatre.
During their two-week stay. Good and Lent taught daily classes to professional dancers ranging in age from nineteen to forty-seven, with more than 100 dancers and observers crowding in for an introduction to the unfamiliar dance technique. They also gave a special class to members of the Central Ballet of China and a lecture/demonstration on the principles of Cunningham choreography. In an eight-minute dance “event,” Lent and Good performed side-by-side with their students, who took to the Cunningham idiom enthusiastically. The American dancers look forward to a possible return visit with the full company to perform and give classes.
Making Music
Joseph Bloch so enjoyed his first trip to China in 1984 that he asked the Center to arrange a second visit. In the fall of 1985 Bloch, who is a retired Juilliard professor of piano literature, spent almost five weeks teaching and lecturing at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music.
He gave a well-attended series of lecture/demonstrations on the history of the piano sonata to music teachers, some of whom had come all the way from Lanzhou in Gansu Province, and also taught master classes to students of the Conservatory’s secondary school. Bloch describes these teenagers as technically “stupendous” and extremely musical. He was concerned, however, that the concentration on musical competitions might lead to inadequate preparation for chamber and orchestral work.
In the fall of 1987, Bloch will return to China once again to visit the Shenyang and Sichuan conservatories. He also hopes to spend several weeks again in Shanghai in 1988.
The violist Jacob Glick and his wife, the violinist Lilo Kantorowicz-Glick, spent ten weeks in China from October of 1985 through January of 1986. Together they taught more than 120 students at the Shanghai Conservatory. Click, on sabbatical from Bennington College, taught viola students; coached various chamber groups, including string quartets, a woodwind quintet, and a piano trio; and gave six viola recitals. Kantorowicz-Glick conducted master classes in violin, primarily for students from the Conservatory’s secondary school.
The Conservatory arranged for the Glicks to give an intensive four-day workshop in chamber music at the Nanjing Liberal Arts College. The couple also spent a few days in Beijing, where they hope to teach on their next trip to China. The Glicks share Joseph Bloch’s concern that the Chinese are placing too much emphasis on competition. For their next trip, therefore, they have designed an instructional approach emphasizing chamber music over solo playing. They hope this will strengthen group playing over individual virtuosity.
Another string instrumentalist whose visit to China was arranged by the Center was violinist Daniel Heifetz. Heifetz spent two weeks in China in the spring of 1986. In Beijing he performed the Bruch “G Minor Concerto” with the Central Philharmonic Orchestra, and, he said, was “pleasantly bowled over” by one of his most attentive and enthusiastic audiences. “They stamped and cheered,” he said, “and clamored for an encore”—a rare event after a concerto performance. In the audience that night was Prince Norodom Sihanouk, adding to the uniqueness of the experience.
When he arrived in Shanghai, prepared to give master classes at the Conservatory of Music, Heifetz received an unexpected request to give a recital. Alerted by the Center before his trip to expect the unexpected, he had brought along music for himself and an accompanist. The impromptu recital was received warmly.
Art in Xinjiang
Far from the well-traveled Shanghai-Beijing axis, in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, Cornelius Chang addressed almost 150 Chinese and foreign art historians, archaeologists, and other scholars. They were gathered for a conference on the art and culture of the Dunhuang/Turfan area, held in Urumqi and Turfan in August of 1985. Chang’s lecture, “The Opening of the Silk Route and its Cultural Significance,” was given at the invitation of the Dunhuang and Turfan Association —a professional association for the study and preservation of this area’s rich artistic tradition.
During this trip Chang, an art historian, had the opportunity to continue research he began in 1980 on his first Chinese visit under Center auspices. His most recent trip was made possible by a grant from the Mary Livingston Griggs and Mary Griggs Burke Foundation.
Center Lends a Hand
In addition to sponsoring the visits of the artists above, the Center assisted cellist Yo-Yo Ma and jazz pianist Billy Taylor on their trips to China in November of 1985, music writer Patricia Schwarz in May of 1986, and Columbia architecture student John Flynn in the summer of 1986. Ma, on his first trip to China, performed a recital of the Bach “Unaccompanied Suites” at the Shanghai Conservatory of Music and gave several master classes. Taylor accompanied New York City Mayor Ed Koch to Tokyo and took a side trip to Shanghai and Beijing, where musicians responded enthusiastically to his lecture/demonstrations on American jazz. Schwarz visited conservatories in Beijing, Xi’an, and Shanghai to gather information for articles on music education in China. Through grants from the Kunstadter Family Foundation and the Institute for International Education, Flynn assisted in a detailed analysis of Western-style architecture of the 1920s and 1930s in Tianjin and Shanghai.
Comings and Goings
The past eighteen months have seen many changes in the Center’s staff. We will miss the energy, dedication, intelligence, and contributions of those who have moved on to new challenges, and we wish them all the best. At the same time, their departure gives us the opportunity to welcome new staff members.
The Center’s financial assistant, David Graifman, left in October 1985 to work with the Bowery Savings Bank. He was replaced temporarily by a student intern, Phillip Reynolds, a master’s degree candidate in arts administration at Columbia. Lisa Wundeler is the new financial assistant. A graduate of the State University of New York at Albany, where she majored in East Asian studies, Lisa spent a school year in Nanjing and a semester in Taiwan studying Chinese. Before coming to the Center, she was a market researcher at Philips Medical Systems.
Having worked for three years as administrative assistant, Sarah Sills left the Center in the spring of 1986 to pursue a career as a professional graphic artist. After a stint doing artwork for District 65 of the United Auto Workers, Sarah is now designing and marketing her own line of greeting cards. Sarah was replaced by Dru Finley, who came to our attention during the summer of 1986, when she volunteered to help coordinate the activities of the Chinese children who participated in the National Dance Institute’s “Event of the Year.” She is a June 1986 graduate of Tufts University, where she majored in Soviet and Eastern European studies. Dru spent a year at Beijing Normal University and a summer in Taiwan studying Chinese before graduating from college.
Margot Landman, who was program assistant, left in the summer of 1986 to continue her graduate studies at Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs on a full-time basis. She will receive her M.l.A. degree in the spring of 1987 and intends to work in the field of U.S.-China relations. Ken Hao started working for the Center in 1982 as a freelance interpreter and escort and became a part- time program assistant in 1985. A doctoral candidate in sociology at Columbia, Ken is now Executive Secretary of the China Fund, a newly established organization that promotes relations between the United States and China.
Pan Hsiao-Li, who is studying international business in the Cooperative Education Program at Northeastern University, worked at the Center from October through December 1986 as an interpreter, escort, translator, and office assistant. During the spring of 1987, Hsiao-Li will work at the Center for another three months before finishing his undergraduate degree at Northeastern.
Fall 1986 work-study participants Joanne Bauer and Theresa Rice also contributed greatly to the Center, as have part-time assistants Wendy Abraham, Chen Yi, Shyh-Ji Chew, Monique Holt, and Jiang Qing-guo.
More to Come
In addition to the Center’s continuing exchanges in arts education, the 1987 spring and summer season will be a time of extraordinary activity for the Center. By our publication date, the Center will have held a gala party at the Chinese mission to the United Nations to celebrate a $500,000 grant from the Ford Foundation, establishing an endowment for the Center at Columbia University, and a $300,000 general support grant from the Henry Luce Foundation. The week before this celebration, a Chinese production of The Music Man will have opened in Beijing, followed the next day by the opening of The Fantasticks. The Music Man, directed by George C. White, president of the Eugene O’Neill Theater Center, and produced by Edward Corn and Gayle Ritchie, is the first Broadway musical to be presented in China. A history-making event, this project is the result of more than two years of combined efforts by the Center, the Eugene O’Neill Center, the Chinese Theatre Association, the Central Opera Theatre of China, and China’s Ministry of Culture After The Fantasticks‘ opening, under the direction of Circle Repertory’s associate artistic director, B. Rodney Marriott, the eight-person play that caught the hearts and imaginations of a generation of Americans will tour outside the major cities of China. This project is being carried out with funding from the American Express Company and the Asian Cultural Council; the Central Opera Theatre, which supports the production costs; and the Chinese Theatre Association, which covers the domestic costs for the Americans while in China.
And last, but certainly not least, a year-long project to introduce the choreography of George Balanchine to China, culminates in a premiere of a Balanchine ballet in Beijing in mid- June. Again representing the combined efforts of many individuals and organizations, the Balanchine Project draws upon the talents and energies of the Center for U.S.-China Arts Exchange, Joan Goldhamer and Joan Wohlstetter, the Balanchine Estate, China’s Ministry of Culture, the Shanghai Ballet, the Central Ballet, and ballet mistresses Francia Russell, Suki Schorer, and Karin von Aroldingen.
The project is funded by the ITT Corporation, Occidental Petroleum Corporation, and the H. J. Heinz Company Foundation. The Balanchine Estate has waived fees for rights and royalties, the Chinese hosts have supported the ballet mistresses during their stays in China, and the production costs have been contributed by China’s Ministry of Culture.
Details of all these projects—and more—will be the subject of our next newsletter.
Purpose and Organization
The Center for United States-China Arts Exchange is a not-for-profit national organization affiliated with the School of the Arts at Columbia University. The Center’s goal is threefold: to facilitate exchanges between the United States and China of individuals and materials in the arts, to stimulate public awareness of the arts in both countries, and to foster collaborative projects among American and Chinese artists.
Established on October 1, 1978, with support grants from the Ford Foundation and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and a research grant from the Henry Luce Foundation, the Center receives contributions of office space and university services from Columbia, where a 1987 Ford Foundation grant established an endowment for the Center’s continued operation. The Center is not a funding organization; it relies on contributions of money materials, and services from foundations, corporations, and individuals to carry out its programs.
The Board of Managers and the Advisory Council, both created in the spring of 1981, oversee the Center’s programs and policies. A Development Committee, comprising two members of the Board of Managers and six members of the Advisory Council, advises and assists the Center in fundraising.
Board of Managers
- Michael I. Sovern, Honorary Chairman
- Robert F. Goldberger
- Schuyler G. Chapin*
- Chou Wen-chung*
Advisory Council
- Leonard Bernstein
- John Bresnan*
- Ana R. Daniel*
- William A. Delano*
- Joan W. Harris
- Esther Hewlett
- Geraldine Kunstadter*
- Ming Cho Lee
- Cho-Liang Lin
- Porter McKeever *
- Arthur Miller
- Waldemar A. Nielsen*
- Robert B. Oxnam
- I. M. Pei
- Russell A. Phillips, Jr.*
- Joseph W. Polisi
- Arthur H. Rosen
- Norman Ross*
- Henry P. Sailer
- Harrison E. Salisbury
- Walter Scheuer
- Martin E. Segal
- Joseph E. Slater
- Isaac Stem
- Audrey Topping
- Theodore H. White
- Herman Wouk
- *Member Development Committee
Officers and Staff
- Chou Wen-chung, Director
- Susan L. Rhodes, Assistant Director
- Dru E. Finley, Administrative Assistant
- Elizabeth P. Wundeler, Financial Assistant
Graduate Research Assistant
- Joanne Bauer
Part-time Assistants
- Wendy Abraham, Chen Yi, Shyh-Ji Chew, Monique Holt, and Jiang Qing-guo
Acknowledgments
The Center is grateful to the following organizations and individuals for general support, program grants, and contributions received in 1985-1986:
- Asian Cultural Council
- Atlantic Richfield Foundation
- Chen Yifei
- Edward Corn, Jr.
- Ford Foundation
- Mary Livingston Griggs and Mary Griggs
- Burke Foundation
- Harris Foundation
- H. J. Heinz Company Foundation
- ITT Corporation
- Albert Kunstadter Family Foundation
- The Henry Luce Foundation, Inc.
- Porter McKeever
- Waldemar A. Nielsen
- Occidental Petroleum Corporation
- Mr. and Mrs. George D. O’Neill
- Rockefeller Brothers Fund
- Dr. and Mrs. William Shaw
- Starr Foundation/American
- International Group
- United Board for Christian Higher Education in Asia
- Wallace Fund
The Center thanks the following organizations and individuals for contributions of materials, services, and hospitality that enriched its 1985-1986 programs:
- Alvin Ailey Dance Company
- Eulalia Andreasen
- The Asia Society
- Jeanne Bamberger
- Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Bloch
- Bolinas-Stinson Union School District
- Raphael Bronstein
- Brooklyn Academy of Music
- Brooklyn Museum of Art
- Mr. and Mrs. James Byars
- Pei-shen Chien
- City College of the City University of New York
- Columbia University Department of Music
- Columbia University Electronic Music Center
- Columbia University Music Division
- Columbia University Painting and Sculpture Division
- Columbia University Writing Division
- Columbia University Press
- Merce Cunningham Dance Company and Foundation
- Curtis Institute of Music
- Dalton School
- Ana Daniel
- Michael Dowdle
- Embassy of the People’s Republic of China to the United Kingdom
- Friends of New Orleans Center for Creative Arts
- Albert Fuller
- Howard Gardner and Ellen Winner
- Allen Ginsberg
- Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum Department of Art History and Archaeology
- Joan Harris
- Harvard University Department of Music
- Daniel Heifetz
- Esther Hewlett
- Dr. Gerald Jampolsky
- The Juilliard School Dance Division
- The Juilliard School Music Division
- Luise Kaish
- Rebecca Kamen
- Constance Keene
- Kenneth Koch
- Kodaly Musical Training Institute
- Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music and the Arts
- David Langlitz
- Lincoln Center Library and Museum for the Performing Arts
- Kenneth Lohf
- Manhattan School of Music
- Horace Mann School
- Metropolitan Museum of Art
- Solomon Mikowsky
- Arthur Miller
- Inge Morath
- Museum of Modern Art
- Museum of the City of New York
- Music Educators National Conference
- National Academy of Design/National
- Academy of Design School
- National Association of Schools of Music
- National Association of Secondary School Principals
- National Dance Institute
- New Ballet School
- New England Conservatory
- New York City Ballet
- Mrs. Siobhan Nicolau
- Nikolais/Louis Dance Foundation
- 92nd Street YM/YWHA
- Eugene O’Neill Theater Center
- Paul Palmer
- People to People International, Delaware Chapter
- Rulan Chao Plan
- PS. 6 (Lillie Devereaux Blake School)
- Harrison E. Salisbury
- Stephan Salisbury
- School of American Ballet
- Shubert Organization
- Sister City Program of the City of New York
- Starrett City managed by Grenadier Realty Corp.
- Jonathan Strasser
- Frank Tirro
- United Airlines
- United States-China People’s Friendship Association, Western Region
- United States Information Agency
- University of California, Berkeley Department of Music
- University of Hartford
- Hartt School of Music
- Voulez-vous Restaurant
- Mr. and Mrs. Walter Wager
- West Hartford Public Schools
- Whitney Museum of American Art
- Yale-China Association
- Yale University Department of Music
- Yale University School of Music
- Yin Chengzong
The Center is indebted to the following individuals for special assistance during the past year:
- Jenny Beck
- Chen Yifei
- Yi-an Chou
- Edward Corn, Jr.
- Lonna B. Jones
- Robert K. Kaplan
- Frederick H. Knubel
- Judith L. Leynse
- John S. Major
- Joe Pineiro
- Robert Stone
- Robert Towers
- Michelle Vosper
- George C. White
- Charles Wu
- Editors: Kitty Chen, Meg Dooley, Susan L. Rhodes, and Josephine Schmidt
- Assistant Editors: Dru E. Finley and Margot E. Landman
- Layout and Design: Oscar Smith
- The Center for US-China Arts Exchange
- Columbia University