The Presence of Germanness

Walter Smerling, Chairman of the Bonn Foundation for Art and Culture & Curator
Born in 1958, majored in Business Administration and Art History, and studied practical training in Television Broadcasting at SWF[FJ1] . He is an author, director and moderator of television films, with a focus on cultural reportage and artist portraits. As exhibition organizer and curator, he has been responsible for the coordination of numerous art and culture projects. He also serves as Chairman of the Bonn Stiftung für Kunst und Kultur e.V. (Foundation for Art and Culture), Director of the MKM Küppersmühle (Museum of Modern Art in Duisburg), and Artistic Director of the Salzburg Foundation. Since 2010, he has been an Honorary Professor for Culture and Economy at the University of Witten, Herdecke.

Yan Shijie
Founder and curator of Red Brick Art Museum, as well as entrepreneur and collector. In the four years since Red Brick Art Museum was founded, Yan Shijie has directed the museum and organized high-quality international art exhibitions for the public, contributing his professional force to the field of contemporary art in China. With academic acumen, he has upheld the artistic mission of Red Brick Art Museum. He has also personally curated various large-scale exhibitions, including Andreas Mühe: Photography; Izumi Kato; Olafur Eliasson: The Unspeakable Openness of Things; Andres Serrano: An American Perspective; Wen Pulin: Archive of Chinese Avant-Garde Art, 1980 and 1990s; and Identification Zone: Chinese-Danish Furniture Design. All these exhibitions have attracted widespread attention from cultural and artistic circles.

Shao Yiyang is a professor, doctoral supervisor and Vice Dean of the College of Humanities of the Central Academy of Fine Arts, China. She holds a Ph.D. from the Department of Art History of the University of Sydney, Australia. Her major publications include After the Post-modern (Shanghai Art Publishing House, 2008, First Edition & Peking University Press, 2012, Revised Edition); Crossing Through the Post-modern (Peking University Press, 2012); History of Western Art: From the 17th Century to the Present (Peking University Press, 2014); and Modern and Contemporary Art of the World (Shanghai People’s Fine Arts Publishing House, 2018).

Gu Yu
Gu Yu is a professor and doctoral supervisor at the School of Foreign Languages of Peking University, and deputy director of Center for German Studies of Peking University. She graduated from Peking University in 1991 with a degree in German language and literature. She completed her Ph.D. in liberal arts at Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Germany, where she studied modern and contemporary German literature, medieval German literature, and Catholic theology.