Custodians of art's stories

Passing on a legacy

The "Learning What Can't Be Taught" show emerged from AAA's continued effort to critically examine pedagogy. AAA co-founder and outgoing executive director Claire Hsu said the team's research has revealed how art schools often evolved into centers for disseminating ideas that impacted studies in other fields, creating a fraternal network of people whose lives were touched by art.

The narratives of contemporary Chinese art "usually begins after 1979 (when China adopted an) open-door policy and the China avant-garde movement in the 1980s," Hsu says. "There is a presumption that nothing happened before that."

"In 'Learning…' we wanted to explore what happened if we looked further back," she added. "Tracing the genealogy of specific teachers and how they have shared their knowledge over different periods of time … opened up individual histories within the greater national history."