Isthmus Article Exhibit Review from July 12th, 2007

The Hall of Self-Reliance
Art
"Chinese Painting & Calligraphy from the Simon & Rosemary Chen Collection," 7/7-8/26 (reception with music by Kathy Taylor & Alexis Carreon, 6-7:30 pm, 7/13)

When: Daily until 08/26/07
Call: 263-2246
Web: www.chazen.wisc.edu

More Information:
This summer, the exhibition The Hall of Self-Reliance: Chinese Painting and Calligraphy from the Simon and Rosemary Chen Collection (July 7-August 26, 2007, in the Mayer Gallery) will feature about 30 works from the recently donated collection, ranging in style from expressionist ink painting to colorful landscapes, flowers, and animals to calligraphy inscriptions.

The selections show how Chinese artists have adapted traditional techniques to modern contexts. The exhibition derives its name, The Hall of Self-Reliance (Qiu Ji Tang), from the two large characters in an inscription by the famous calligrapher and painter Zhao Zhiqian. The inscription quotes and explains a well-known teaching of Confucius on the virtue of self-reliance.

The Chazen Museum of Art's permanent collection of Chinese art has been greatly expanded thanks to the generosity of Simon K. Chen and Rosemary Ho Chen. The gift of more than 100 works includes Chinese calligraphy, painting, woodblock prints, and rubbings, dating from 1692 to 1996. The family collection was started by Simon Chen's parents, Hoshien Tchen and Linsie Chao. Hoshien Tchen lived in France while studying political science at the University of Paris. He became interested in art and frequented museums and galleries, where he met Chinese and European artists. When Tchen returned to China he served in provincial government under the Chinese Republic and later worked for the World Cultural Association, where his responsibilities included acquiring artworks for international exhibitions. After the 1949 Chinese Revolution, Tchen immigrated with his family to the United States, eventually settling in Chicago. The Tchens were forced to leave most of their artworks behind in China, but gradually rebuilt the collection with paintings and calligraphy acquired on periodic visits to Taiwan.

Simon Chen left China before his father, in 1948, and met Rosemary Ho while traveling to the United States. They started out in Chicago but eventually moved to Wisconsin, where they have built strong ties in the business community and at the UW-Madison. After the United States recognized the People's Republic of China in 1979, Simon and Rosemary added paintings and calligraphy by old masters and modern contemporary artists to their holdings of works by well-known artists active in Taiwan. Many paintings by Szechuan artists were collected by Rosemary's father, and woodblock prints by Simon's father.

Simon Chen received his Ph.D. from UW-Madison, and Rosemary worked at McArdle Laboratory for Cancer Research. Several of Hoshien Tchen's grandchildren also attended the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and it was his wish that the collection come to the university museum, to promote greater appreciation for Chinese art and culture in Wisconsin. Simon and Rosemary Chen have enhanced the gift by also donating to the Kohler Art Library their books on Chinese art, some of which are rare or even unavailable in other university libraries. These resources create a strong foundation for the study of twentieth-century Chinese art at the University of Wisconsin.

Julia K. Murray, professor of art history, East Asian studies, and religious studies at UW-Madison, has worked with the Chens and museum staff to present The Hall of Self-Reliance. In curating this inaugural exhibition of the Chen collection, Professor Murray gave her students in two upper-level art history courses the opportunity to examine original artworks while they learned about the complex and fascinating history of recent Chinese art.

The public is invited to a free reception on Friday, July 13, 2007, from 6 to 7:30 p.m., with music by Kathy Taylor and Alexis Carreon, string duo, as well as refreshments and a cash bar. Generous funding for this exhibition has been provided by the Chazen Museum of Art Council, the Hilldale Fund, and Wisconsin Arts Board with funds from the State of Wisconsin.

Kohler Art Library Exhibit

Chinese Art Books from the Simon and Rosemary Chen Collection

In 2006, the Kohler Art Library received over 200 books and serials on Chinese art from Simon and Rosemary Chen. This extraordinary gift focuses on contemporary Chinese art from the late 19th century to the present day. Most of the books and serials, some of which are rare, were acquired by the Chens during travels to Taiwan in the 1970s and to mainland China in the 1980s. Many of the titles are owned only by a small number of libraries worldwide and are not available on the book market today. The sizeable and important donation creates a new collection of strength for the library. Simon Chen, a local engineer, placed his chop (the characters translate: Self Reliance Hall Collection of Chinese Books and Paintings) in each item to mark their provenance. Complementing the library gift, the Chens donated a collection of over seventy works of Chinese paintings, calligraphy, and rubbings dating from the 17th to the 20th centuries to the Chazen Museum of Art. Important works in the collection include paintings by the early Qing artists Zhu Da (1626-1705) and Yu Zhiding (1647-1716) and by the Republican artists Gao Qiffeng (1889-1933) and Chang Dai-chien (1899-1983). The most recent examples of art represent the revival of traditional ink-painting techniques in mainland China after the Cultural Revolution. The gift of Chinese art books and paintings combine to form an invaluable teaching and research tool in the arts and humanities. The exhibit runs from July 13-September 16, 2007. Curated by Lyn Korenic.

Chazen Museum Introduction

The Hall of Self-Reliance: Chinese Painting and Calligraphy
from the Simon and Rosemary Chen Collection

July 7 to Auguts 26, 2007 | Mayer Gallery

The exhibition will feature about thirty works from the recently donated collection, ranging in style from expressionist ink painting to colorful landscapes, flowers, and animals to calligraphy inscriptions. The selections show how Chinese artists have adapted traditional techniques to modern contexts.

The exhibition derives its name—The Hall of Self-Reliance (Qiu Ji Tang)—from the two large characters in an inscription by the famous calligrapher and painter Zhao Zhiqian. The inscription quotes and explains a well-known teaching of Confucius on the virtue of self-reliance.

The Chazen Museum of Art’s permanent collection of Chinese art has been greatly expanded thanks to the generosity of Simon K. Chen and Rosemary Ho Chen. The gift of more than 100 works includes Chinese calligraphy, painting, woodblock prints, and rubbings, dating from 1692 to 1996. The family collection was started by Simon Chen’s parents, Hoshien Tchen and Linsie Chao. Hoshien Tchen lived in France while studying political science at the University of Paris. He became interested in art and frequented museums and galleries, where he met Chinese and European artists. When Tchen returned to China he served in provincial government under the Chinese Republic and later worked for the World Cultural Association, where his responsibilities included acquiring artworks for international exhibitions.

After the 1949 Chinese Revolution, Tchen immigrated with his family to the United States, eventually settling in Chicago. The Tchens were forced to leave most of their artworks behind in China, but gradually rebuilt the collection with paintings and calligraphy acquired on periodic visits to Taiwan. Simon Chen left China before his father, in 1948, and met Rosemary Ho while traveling to the United States. They started out in Chicago but eventually moved to Wisconsin, where they have built strong ties in the business community and at the UW–Madison.

After the United States recognized the People’s Republic of China in 1979, Simon and Rosemary added paintings and calligraphy by old masters and modern contemporary artists to their holdings of works by well-known artists active in Taiwan. Many paintings by Szechuan artists were collected by Rosemary’s father, and woodblock prints by Simon’s father.

Simon Chen received his Ph.D. from UW–Madison, and Rosemary worked at McArdle Laboratory for Cancer Research. Several of Hoshien Tchen’s grandchildren also attended the University of Wisconsin–Madison, and it was his wish that the collection come to the university museum, to promote greater appreciation for Chinese art and culture in Wisconsin. Simon and Rosemary Chen have enhanced the gift by also donating to the Kohler Art Library their books on Chinese art, some of which are rare or even unavailable in other university libraries. These resources create a strong foundation for the study of twentieth-century Chinese art at the University of Wisconsin.

Julia K. Murray, Professor of Art History, East Asian Studies, and Religious Studies at UW–Madison, has worked with the Chens and museum staff to present The Hall of Self-Reliance. In curating this inaugural exhibition of the Chen collection, Professor Murray gave her students in two upper-level art history courses the opportunity to examine original artworks while they learned about the complex and fascinating history of recent Chinese art.

The public is invited to a free reception on Friday, July 13, 2007, from 6 to 7:30 p.m., with music by Kathy Taylor and Alexis Carreon, string duo, as well as refreshments and a cash bar.

Generous funding for this exhibition has been provided by the Chazen Museum of Art Council, the Hilldale Fund, and Wisconsin Arts Board with funds from the State of Wisconsin.

Capital Times Front Page Article from July 4th 2007

ART OF THANKS

GRATEFUL IMMIGRANTS DONATE $1.5 M CHINESE COLLECTION TO UW'S CHAZEN

By Jacob Stockinger

To immigrants Simon and Rosemary Chen, donating their $1.5 million collection of modern Chinese art to the University of Wisconsin's Chazen Museum seemed a simple act of loyalty, fairness and gratitude.

"We like America, and we like Madison," says Simon, a UW alumnus and successful entrepreneur who is 83 and about to retire in the coming weeks. "We got everything here, our education and our kids. We immigrated, and we want to be a part of the USA."

His wife shares his sentiments, in particular about Madison and the UW.

"We consider Madison our home and have benefited a lot from the education at the UW," she says, explaining that all four of their children started college at the UW. Two daughters graduated from the UW, while a son and another daughter transferred to complete their studies.

"That's how we decided to donate to the Chazen," Rosemary adds. "This way, the public will be able to enjoy our art."

* * *

From exiles to art collectors: The journey of the Chens and their art collection is a long tale of hard work and persistence.

It is also an ironic story, since their acquisition of Chinese art began with abandoning it.

The year was 1950, and Simon's family fled mainland China after the Communists defeated the Nationalists for control of the world's most populous nation.

Simon's father, leaving all his art behind except for two or three pieces he carried in a trunk, went first to Taiwan and then, in 1952, to Chicago, where eventually he got a job at the Field Museum.

While leaving China, young Simon Chen, who had just completed his college studies in Shanghai, encountered Rosemary Ho.

"We met on a slow boat from China," he likes to quip.

In the early 1950s, Rosemary completed her undergraduate studies in chemistry at the now-defunct Barat College in Lake Forest, Ill., while Simon pursued his doctorate in mechanical engineering at the UW. Rosemary came to Madison to take summer courses at the UW, and the two married, becoming naturalized citizens in the early 1960s. Rosemary worked at the McArdle Cancer Laboratory on the UW campus, stayed home to raise their children and then worked as a vice president in her husband's consulting company, Power and Energy International (PEI).

Simon frequently went back to Taiwan as part of an effort to industrialize the new island nation and also traveled around the world. As he did so, Simon met artists and bought pieces mostly through relatives and friends, rather than dealers.

The couple continued to move around the Midwest. Simon worked 17 years in Chicago for International Harvester, then worked for diesel engine maker Fairbanks Moss in Beloit, where in 1980 he founded PEI. In 1988, he opened his own research laboratory in Madison. Tired of long commutes, the couple relocated PEI to Madison in 1990 and then moved themselves here from Delavan.

* * *

Paths cross: In the 1980s Simon, Rosemary and Rosemary's father, who also owned some Chinese art, visited the Chazen, then known as the Elvehjem, and agreed they would combine and donate their individual art collections.

Also around that time, in 1991, the museum mounted a breakthrough exhibit, the first outside China, for the Chinese dissident artist Xu Bing. Xu went on to an international career and to receive a MacArthur "genius" grant.

"That show put us on the map," says UW Chinese art Professor Julia Murray.

About three years ago, Murray started working with the Chens, serving as a go-between for the museum since she had the specialized knowledge of Chinese art, history and language to assess the importance of the collection.

In the end, she determined that the art would indeed provide a valuable addition to the Chazen's permanent collection and the start of a Chinese art collection that would serve both the public and students.

Chazen director Russell Panczenko says the Chens' donation will be the first major step toward building a collection of modern and contemporary Chinese art, a pioneering gift that will become a centerpiece of the museum's expanded Asian gallery that will be housed in the new addition that is set to open in early 2011.

"We're very grateful to them," he says. "Without donations from people like the Chens, we wouldn't be the museum we are."

Last year the Chens gave a first installment - appraised at more than $1 million, Simon says - of about 100 art works plus many art books with reproductions and prints to the Chazen Museum and the Kohler Art Library located in the same building.

The Chens have traveled back to China many times since it started to open up after the death of Mao Zedong in 1976, and they always bought contemporary Chinese art to bring home. Simon, who is writing a book about his experiences, says he has seen major economic and cultural changes in his homeland.

"The leaders are still all Communists, but they now practice capitalism," Simon says. "Art very much goes where the current political situation goes. Now it's capitalism and it's free. You can see all kinds of art, and it doesn't involve too much politics."

Though ill health and old age have probably put an end to their traveling and collecting, their generosity will continue on in the future.

The Chens are currently downsizing, as they prepare to move from a large house on the city's north side into a smaller apartment in the retirement community of Middleton Glen.

"We're not finished yet," Rosemary says, adding that in the next few years they will donate the rest of their collection, which is valued at about $500,000, according to Simon.

The Chazen's Panczenko says he understands why the museum will have to wait for the rest of the collection.

"Some people store their art away, but the Chens really live with it," Panczenko says. "They didn't want to donate what they still want to look at."

Capital Times Life Article from July 4th 2007

FINE CHINA COLLECTION

CHAZEN SHOW HIGHLIGHTS FAMILY'S GIFT

By Jacob Stockinger The Capital Times

When it comes to collecting Chinese art, the University of Wisconsin's Chazen Museum of Art is about to take a great leap forward.

Thanks to the generosity of UW-Madison alumni Simon and Rosemary Chen and their children, the museum has acquired the first installment of 20th century Chinese art in what promises to be the beginning of an important new collection.

Although modern and contemporary Chinese politics and economics are among the hottest topics in current affairs, Western art museums have typically lagged behind.

"People are finally coming around and starting to pay attention to the Chinese art in the 20th century," says UW Chinese art professor Julia Murray. She notes that much older, more traditional works have been the focus of most museum collections. "But in the past decade or so, modern and contemporary Chinese art has become hot."

Murray should know. She curated the show "The Hall of Self-Reliance," which opens Saturday in the Chazen's Mayer Gallery and features about 30 of the 100 works the Chen family has so far donated. She also wrote the wall labels and brochure for the exhibit.

The Chen donation pleases Chazen director Russell Panczenko.

"We had no example of trends in Chinese art in the 20th century, and now we have nice grouping," Panczenko says, adding that the Chazen's new addition, set to open in early 2011, will have a bigger and more diverse gallery devoted to Asian art. "Most of what we have now is Southeast Asian art, so this will expand it to the public. Contemporary Chinese art is exploding as the country opens up. Chinese artists are traveling abroad and at home are being allowed to show their work to their peers. It's a period of tremendous ferment.

"I'm sure Chinese art is going to have a major impact on the art world in general," Panczenko adds. "As developing countries become more affluent, they can deal with culture and identity and not just survival. And they fall outside the Western canon. So much of our attention is focused on modernism in Europe and North America, and now you have this contemporary art exploding that has nothing to do with that at all. Many critics don't know how to react to it. It doesn't fit into their set of concepts."

* * *

Back to the future: The art may be modern, but don't look for either Maoist propaganda or Chinese proverbs about capitalism.

That's because a lot of contemporary Chinese art looks backward to older forms, especially to calligraphy, Murray explains. It has to do with the Chinese notion of what an educated person was, much like the Western idea of the well-rounded "Renaissance man," only many centuries earlier as part of the Confucian tradition that said arts were a form of relaxation and not a main occupation.

"The amateur ideal took definitive shape in the 11th century in China," Murray explains. "It meant that a well-rounded gentleman or a government official can express himself in an artistic way. There was also the idea that if you're an educated person, you have already trained your hand by learning to write and you don't need more manual training to create the symbolic language of art. This is not outsider art at all, this is the establishment creating art."

Collected over the years by the Chen family, which fled from mainland China and the Communists and went to Taiwan and then to the Midwest, the art explores the way modern times have revitalized older traditions.

"This is not just the stuff commanding high auction prices right now," Murray says.

Viewers will see the revival of traditional brush-and-ink painting and calligraphy, of oil paintings and rubbings. All the works are two-dimensional. The oldest dates from 1692, and the most recent date from the 1990s, with most of the collection coming into the 20th century, especially the period after the 1911 Nationalist revolution led by Sun Yat-sen against the emperor.

"The scholar official is also an amateur artist," Murray says, noting that much of the art has inscriptions by the makers to the collectors as a sign of the personal relationships that the art represented.

"There's also quite a bit of variety," says Murray, citing landscapes, figures and portraits, flowers and striking calligraphy in different formats.

"I think everyone should be able to find something that appeals to them, even without knowing what they're looking at," Murray says.

"The collection is very important," adds Murray, who says both her undergraduate and graduate students will use it.

"It is a good group of things that have a logical connection with each other," she says. "I can imagine using it with a lot of my courses to show art and also artistic aspects of social and political trends of China in the 20th century. People who don't innately have an interest in the arts will find it interesting that the movers and shakers of China in the 20th century also had an interest in art."

And, she predicts, the Chen collection will grow in relevance.

"China is only going to become more important," she adds. "China is certainly going to be a dominant form of culture and art in the 21st century. You just can't say American or European art forms are the norm and that the others are variations. Looked at from the Chinese point of view, we are the variation."

Panczenko agrees and thinks the collection is good for both the public and the museum.

"This art is something you can take at whatever level suits you," Panczenko says. "I feel like this is just the beginning. We can do more with this collection and might even attract others who think the Chazen will be a good home for their art."

THE DETAILS

What: A free public reception with refreshments and a cash bar. The Chens and their family will be present.

When: 6 p.m. Friday, July 13.

Where: Chazen Museum of Art, 800 University Ave.

Etc.: The show runs through Aug. 26. For information, call 263-2246.