China's hunger for art in spotlight

When Jerome Cohen walked into a lecture hall at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing in 1979, he had not anticipated the sight before him. There were several hundred people gathered staring at slides of Willem de Kooning, Jackson Pollock and other artists. The 83-year-old professor of law at New York University was amazed.

"It was one of the most amazing experiences I've ever had," he says today. "This was the first talk anybody had given about American art and the first talk given by an American."

The episode revealed the hunger of the Chinese for art and their eagerness to learn about Western contemporary art.