On site only

The interview was conducted in New York on 15 October 2009.


Biography:

Joan Lebold Cohen is a photographer and art historian who specializes in Chinese art and film.

A regular visitor to Asia since 1961, Cohen has lived for some time in Japan, Hong Kong and China, where she was witness to the post-Cultural Revolution period of 1979 to 1981. Her book The New Chinese Painting, 1949–1986 was one of the first English-language publications to introduce recent generations of Chinese artists to the West.

Cohen has served as a curator for several exhibitions of new Chinese art in the United States as well as for the photographic exhibition ‘New York, the City and Its People’, in Beijing. Following a 22-year career as a lecturer at Tufts University’s School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston, Ms Cohen is now a Research Fellow at Harvard University’s Fairbank Center for East Asian Studies, as well as an Associate of Columbia University’s Modern China Seminar.


簡歷︰

Joan Lebold Cohen, 攝影家和藝術史學者,從事中國藝術及電影研究。

自1961年始,Cohen多次前往亞洲,曾旅居日本、香港及中國大陸,在1979–1981年間在大陸,見證了處於後文革時期的中國。她的《The New Chinese Painting, 1949–1986》 (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1987)是最早於西方出版、介紹新中國藝術的英文著作。
 
Cohen在美國策劃過數個新中國藝術的展覽,亦在北京策劃過攝影展覽, 如《New York, the City and Its People》。Cohen在波士頓塔夫茲夫茲大學美術館分院任教二十二年之久,現任哈佛大學費正清東亞研究中心及哥倫比亞大學現代中國研究協會研究員。

Context

In 2006, Asia Art Archive began a focused archiving project called 'Materials of the Future: Documenting Contemporary Chinese Art from 1980-1990'. This project aimed at developing a comprehensive collection of primary research materials including books, periodicals, newspapers, exhibition brochures, invitations, video recordings, correspondence, and other relevant documents.

As part of this project, AAA digitised more than 80,000 items of material from personal archives to include artists Mao Xuhui, Wu Shanzhuan, Zhang Xiaogang, and Zhang Peili; curators and critics Fei Dawei, Lu Peng, and Zheng Shengtian; as well as the archives of Tokyo Art Gallery. As part of the research process over 75 in-depth interviews with key artists, curators, and critics were conducted. From a portion of these interviews, AAA created a documentary film about experimental art in South China (Guangzhou) in the 1980s entitled From Jean-Paul Sartre to Teresa Teng: Contemporary Cantonese Art in the 1980s.

AAA’s 1980s archiving project culminated with the launch of a comprehensive website portal called www.china1980s.org in September 2010.

Access level

Onsite

Spoken language

English

Content type

event photograph/recording, 

interview documentation

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Interview with Joan Lebold Cohen