This event marks the 80th anniversary of the China Academy of Art. It will explore relationships, interactions and tensions between the art academy, contemporary art practices and cultural perspectives that shape them. The symposium is composed of two sessions: Session One reflects on the multicultural condition of the epistemological basis of art academy while Session Two probes the dynamics between contemporary art practices and art education.Across the last four decades, various models of multiculturalism have helped us get to grips with changing social realities and movements—a global arena increasingly shot through with cultural diversity, difference and clash. With the increasingly pluralistic global condition, the rapid international exchange and communication in the arts and knowledge, there has been growing discussion about bringing together the world’s cultural resources in the framework of Academy. At odds with this, we are faced with a sheer proliferation of cultural identities and autonomous value systems. These put into question notions of a ‘monolithic’, unified pool of intellectual resources. For some time now academy become a platform for the international communication of different knowledge and a negotiated space of diverse values. Under the circumstances it seems that the pressing issues facing art academy today concern how, amidst the frenzy of globalisation, can we seek out and establish a common intellectual terrain for art-educational practice? What of speculations about autonomous cultural consciousness in a world of cross-cultural, hybridizing vocabularies? How should the Art Academy see its role in response to such emerging tensions and pulls? What problems might be raised by the particularities of the Chinese experience for Art Academy strategies?

Session I: 08.04.2008

Conditions and Strategies: Academy in the Multicultural Context

Time: 13:30PM—18:00PM. Break 15:30 PM -15:45PM

Session II: 09.04.2008

Education as Communication: Turn of Visual Culture during the Age of Mass Media

Time: 13:30PM—18:00PM. Break 15:30 PM -15:45PM