Respect for Art: Visual Arts administration and Management in China and the United States

Respect for Art is the first book to grapple with issues of visual arts management and administration in China and the United States. A collaboration between two professors of arts administration, one in Beijing and one in New York City, it focuses on four areas: museums, non-profit spaces, the art market including commercial galleries, expositions and auction houses, and public art. The book identifies areas which seem similar mechanisms for becoming a non-profit organization, tax laws regarding arts institutions---but which have substantial differences in history, culture and understanding; areas where both countries struggle with rapid change the market for contemporary Chinese artists the escalation of the auction house, the social relevance of public art; and concerns for the future cultural and intellectual property, cultural policy, accessibility, art education, and the myriad of skills, sensitivity, theory and practice to sustain a healthy respect for art.

Professor Joan Jeffri is Director and Founder of the Research Center for Arts and Culture and Director of the graduate program in Arts Administration at Teachers College, Columbia University in New York City. Author of several books about the management of arts organizations, including The Emerging Arts: Management, Survival and Growth and ArtsMoney: Raising It, Saving It and Earning It, she has a particular interest in the care and survival of artists. She has written the 12-volume series entitled Information on Artists, the 6-volume Information on Artists II and Information on Artists III: Bay Area, the 3-report series Artists Training and Career Project, as well as three books of oral histories on artists and related experts in acting, crafts and painting. For ten years she was an Executive Editor of the Journal of Arts Management and Law and has published articles on a wide variety of arts administration issues in it, as well as in Poetics, the International Journal of Cultural Policy, International Journal of Arts Management, and American Demographics. In 2005 her chapter Managing Uncertainty: The Visual Arts Market for Contemporary Art in the United States appeared in Understanding International Art Markets (Routledge, UK) She is the past president of the Association of Arts Administration Educators, a member of the League of Professional Theatre Women, ArtTable and Actors Equity Association. She has served on a national task force for health care and insurance issues for artists for the National Endowment for the Arts, has served as President of the Board of the International Arts-Medicine Association and is on the Advisory Board of the Cultural Policy and National Data Archive at Princeton University. She has taught and consulted in Brazil, Canada, China, Hong Kong, Hungary, Israel, Japan, Portugal, Spain, Russia and was a Senior Research Fulbright Fellow in Australia in 1996 and in Israel in 2006-2007. She recently completed Making Changes: Facilitating the Transition of Dancers to Post-Performance Careers, a study of dancers career transition in eleven countries, with cultural economists William Baumol and David Throsby, and Changing the Beat: a Study of the Worklife of Jazz Musicians in four U.S. cities commissioned by the National Endowment of the Arts, and is now at work a study of aging artists in New York City. She is the Academic Director of the Arts Leadership Institute, a collaboration between the Research Center for Arts and Culture and The Arts & Business Council. A former poet and professional actress (Harold Pinter s The Homecoming, The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-in-the-Moon Marigolds, Lincoln Center Repertory Company), Professor Jeffri works closely with artists, arts service organizations, arts unions, and arts researchers. Professor Yu Ding is Director of the Arts Administration Department at Humanities College, Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing. Author of several books about Chinese art history and art criticism, including Neo-classical Fashion Reverberation at the End of the Century and The Documents of Chinese Oil Painting: 1452-2000. He also focused his research on Western art history, wrote and published Western Art in the 19th Century and The Masters Who Influence the World Art History:the Time of Classicality. For thirteen years he has been an Executive Editor of The Journal of World Art and published articles on art history and art criticism, as well as in Art Research Magazine, Art Observation, and Art Market. In 2003,he founded the program of arts administration at the Central Academy of Fine Arts as the first program in visual arts education in China. Then his research direction turned to arts administration. He has been the chief editor of the book Arts Administration & Management in 2004, which was the first thesis edition in visual arts administration in China