Yang Yingshi

Ed.M. AIE '04

Yang Yingshi attended the HGSE Arts in Education Program, during the 2003-04 academic year, on a Courtney Sale Ross Arts in Education Scholarship that is usually granted to AIE students from China who maintain an interest in museum education. He had come that year from a master’s program in arts and cultural management at Peking University, and before that from undergraduate study in English at Nankai University and professional training in journalism at the University of Hawaii at Manoa. He had done a good deal of academic work, always with the intent, he says, of “promoting art education to the general public.”

Susan Fuhrman (left), President of Teachers College Columbia University, listens to a presentation by Yang Yingshi, doctoral student of the College’s Art and Art Education Program, on his Chinese calligraphy, at the President’s Office on May 14, 2007.In fact, he had already done a good deal of promotional work as well. Since 2000, he had served as an art critic and editor for the China Daily in Beijing, and had been an active observer and participant on the contemporary Chinese art scene, publishing dozens of art reviews and essays in English and Chinese. Trained in traditional Chinese calligraphy, Yingshi had studied the relationship between Chinese calligraphy and contemporary culture, and had curated exhibitions such as "Calligraphy as Source and Resource: Chinese Contemporary Art" (Asia-Australia Arts Center, Sydney; 2004) and worked as a consultant for exhibitions such as "Brushes with Surprise: The Art of Calligraphy in Modern China" (The British Museum, London; 2002). His wasn’t a case of a novice coming to AIE in search of a good introduction to the field, but of an experienced thinker and doer arriving in hopes of expanding his knowledge base.

At HGSE, Yingshi had the pleasure of taking AIE former founding director Jessica Hoffmann Davis’s year-long core courses on the arts in education, relishing “the passion, energy and wisdom she put into the preparation and presentation of each single session.” He was fortunate to have Howard Gardner as his academic advisor—and to take courses from the likes of HGSE faculty members Shari Tishman, Roger Dell, Terry Tivnan, and Jim Honan. Focusing on “the educational roles of cultural institutions,” and on arts administration in the West, Yingshi also took courses at the Kennedy School of Government and the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences during his year in AIE, and was particularly impressed by the university-wide advocacy of those complementary opposites, leadership and teamwork. “At Harvard,” he recalls, “I realized that I should honor my commitment to making changes to arts and cultural institutions back in China, especially fostering their educational role to the general public through efforts on practice, administration, and policy-making levels.”

Representatives from the Teachers College Chinese Students and Scholars Association and the College’s Office of International Services pose for a group picture with President Susan Fuhrman (center) and the Chinese calligraphy by Yang Yingshi (second from right).After his 2004 graduation from the AIE program, Yingshi entered the doctoral program in arts education at Columbia University’s Teachers College and began to do just that, albeit from far away at first. Specializing in arts administration and art museum education, with a particular focus on the role of art museums as educational institutions in the U.S. and the implications in China, he studied and initiated a number of museum-education projects with scholarship and fellowship support from TC itself, the Asian Cultural Council, and the Hawaii Community Foundation REC Fund. In summer 2005, he initiated and co-organized the first-ever international workshop and conference on arts administration education in Beijing. That summer, he also brought a high-profile delegation from the National Art Museum of China (NAMOC) and other Chinese cultural institutions to investigate the design, facilities, and management of leading art museums in New York, Washington D. C., and Los Angeles. In fall 2006, he initiated, fundraised, and coordinated a groundbreaking two-month visit for NAMOC’s education director to research and observe art museum education in six major cities of the United States. During his four years at Teachers College, Yingshi also worked at the Asia Society Museum in New York on a grant and received on-site training for museum professionals in Asian art as a Getty Museum Leadership Fellow in 2006-07—all the while looking forward to returning to Beijing to work at NAMOC.

Now he has graduated from Teachers College and returned as planned to Beijing to the job that was waiting for him— program officer in the international affairs office at NAMOC (the National Art Museum of China). Of his years in the US, first in AIE and then in NYC, he says, with the same gracious acknowledgment of good fortune that he has always shown in what is turning out to be a distinguished career, “It was a great experience for me.”