AMCA Website Project!

Just when we’re getting ready to go to Paris, a new exciting project starts! Several months ago Rita Wong contacted us through our website and introduced us to AMCA (Archives of Modern Chinese Art) based in Taiwan.  Apparently Professor Francesca dal Lago (who is on the advisory board) mentioned our research project to her.

An independent non-profit organization committed to collecting, preserving and providing access to materials that document the history of the visual arts of China from 1840 to 1979.

AMCA is the first archival repository of its kind committed to providing extensive source materials for students and scholars to support their research. […] AMCA is digitizing its collection of primary source materials for the purpose of preservation and dissemination.

Websites dedicated to individual artists are constructed to deliver artists’ biographical information, artworks, personal papers and photographs, bibliography, and audio and video streaming of performances, interviews, lectures, and related events. In addition, AMCA will provide an online catalog of books and journals in its collection with tables of content to enable convenient cross-referencing. The key objective of AMCA’s digitization program is to encourage students to pursue topics in modern Chinese art by providing original material online that would otherwise be difficult to access.

They have already built sites for Sanyu and Ding Yanyong so check them out. Websites for Xie Jinglan and Pan Yuliang will be coming soon. They have recently signed on 10 more artists as well. They also did an extensive interview with Danielle Li whose parents worked with Liu Jipiao. We’ve been told that she remembers her mother speaking of him often. We own a photograph with all of them together in Hangzhou.

This past Saturday Jennifer Chang, co-founder of AMCA came to Los Angeles to meet with us. We spent a lovely afternoon getting to know each other. We seem to know a lot of the same people…small world!  Her excitement and enthusiasm was contagious and 3 hours flew by like that!

We will be working with Jennifer to build a website dedicated to the art of Liu Jipiao. And where our blog is the personal journal of our research and how its affected our family, the AMCA website will be purely academic, posting the data we’ve uncovered over the past 2 years including the articles written by and about Liu, his artwork, letters, photos and stories of his life that we’ve pieced together.

We are very excited about this project because the mission, objectives and the passion of this organization reflect much of what our grandfather believed about art, cultural exchange, sharing of information and above all, the importance of education.

Speaking for myself, I’m a little bit overwhelmed by the depth of the project but happy to report that a lot of the organization and cataloging of the materials on Liu has already been done along the way! Whew, yay for being organized!