At the occasion of “The Art of the Enlightenment” exhibition held jointly by Chinese and German museums, Dresden State Art Collections (SKD) and the China Central Academy of Fine Arts (CAFA) seize this opportunity to invite young people from all over the world. During this big event taken in Beijing, youngsters will have a free discussion on topics like culture, art and museum.

Central Academy of Fine Arts will call up youngsters from 16 to 20 years old among the whole country, only if they love culture and art, and have their unique thought into these topics. At the same time, Dresden State Art Collections will select participants around Europe.

In April of 2010, Dresden State Art Collections successfully held the youth congress “Culture! My Future” as its first part of the grand exhibition celebrating its 450 anniversary. The congress invited 30 young people from Turkey, Czech Republic, Poland, Russia, Spain, France, China and Germany. The 10 main statements resulted from the discussion was finally presented to the governor of Saxony. This August, Dresden State Art Collections will cooperate with Central Academy of Fine Arts, to further develop this international dialogue.

Participants of the congress—“Culture! My Future” were not only college students of Arts majors, but also high school youngsters who guide in museums in their leisure time. Experts and audiences were deeply impressed by these young people. They really care about culture and art and they do love museums, besides internet, sports and fashion.

In a year of preparation of “Enlighten My Future!”, communication and cooperation is making the idea of the youth congress come true.

Topics as exhibition content, the transformation of cultural institute in the future and the role of museum in a modern society will be talked about in group discussions, working groups and expert talks. These have been studied for many years by experts, but how do young people think about museums? What nowadays youngsters care about and expect, will just come around into real one or two decades later. Now, it’s time to listen to them.

Here, art and museum are not obscure and severe. Come to join us, to young people who just like you and me, loving art and culture.

Time: 2011.8.26-31

Director: Yu Ding Zheng Qinyan (CAFA)

Felicitas von Mallinckrodt (SKD)

Executive: Zhang Yang Yan Liemin (CAFA)

About the Writer

Zhang Yang studies at Art History Dep., Central Academy of Fine Arts now. She attended this congress in April, 2010.

For more information, please contact with her, persimmotag@yahoo.com.cn

View the Chinese version of this article here