Ties That Bind - Bay Area Council Economic Institute

New Networks Emerge
Two, featuring archaeological pieces. The exhibition drew
800,000 visitors in an eight-week period. A 1983 exhibit,
“Treasures of the Shanghai Museum: 6,000 Years of Chinese
Art,” was the first exhibition organized with a museum in China
and was initiated through the San Francisco-Shanghai sister
city relationship. In 1994 the museum hosted an exhibit of the
famous terra cotta warriors excavated from the tomb of China’s
first emperor in Xi’an.
By the 1990s the museum’s collection and exhibitions had expanded,
outgrowing the original DeYoung quarters. Beginning
with a $15 million leadership gift from Silicon Valley entrepreneur
Chong-Moon Lee and a 1994 bond issue, plans took
shape to renovate the old Main Library building in Civic Center.
A new, three-story Asian Art Museum opened in 2003. Today
the Asian Art Museum, under the leadership of director Emily
Sano, is expanding its educational programs and adding cultural
events and a new focus on contemporary artists in Asia,
including younger artists from China.
Representing this new direction, in 2006 the museum hosted an
exhibition of large-scale landscape paintings of Three Gorges
dam, a controversial project to dam central China’s Yangtze
River, by Liu Xiaodong. By extending the U.S. exchange with
China from the political and economic to the cultural realm, the
Asian Art Museum is making an important contribution to
Americans’ understanding of China.
Personal and small business ties add richness and (sometimes literally) flavor to the Bay Area-
China connection, in ways that are diverse and too extensive to document. Ex-San Franciscan
William Wu, who now lives in Luzhi, outside of Shanghai, is a longtime member of the San
Francisco-Shanghai Sister City Committee and a former executive director of the Chinese Cultural
Center of San Francisco. Wu has actively promoted development of a traditional Chinese
garden in the City. The project has the backing of the San Francisco-Shanghai Sister City Committee
and the City of Shanghai, which would provide the labor and materials; the City of San
Francisco would contribute land and maintenance. If built, the garden would bring both Bay
Area residents and visitors a rare outdoor manifestation of a unique form of Chinese culture.
While the Chinese population of the Bay Area has long since dispersed throughout the region,
San Francisco’s Chinatown remains a gravitational center for the Chinese community, particularly
the large numbers of Cantonese speaking Chinese Americans and immigrants with roots in
Guangzhou Province. The Chinese Cultural Center, across the street from Portsmouth Square,
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