Arts and Entrepreneurship Intersect

Edgar Snow Symposium 2014

The biennial Edgar Snow Symposium returns to Kansas City this week with an array of events celebrating the 32-year-old partnership between the Kansas City-based Edgar Snow Memorial Foundation and the Beijing-based China Society for People’s Friendship Studies.

The theme for this year’s symposium is “Edgar Snow’s Kansas City: Where Arts and Entrepreneurship Intersect.” Featured events include a gala banquet Thursday evening featuring a closed-circuit video address by former president Jimmy Carter; a Friday morning panel discussion describing the ongoing partnership between the University of Missouri-Kansas City Conservatory of Music and Dance and the Tianjin Conservatory of Music; and Friday afternoon panels exploring the contribution of iconic architecture to entrepreneurship and the arts; and one on UMKC’s planned Downtown Campus for the Arts.

See the full symposium program for complete details on all symposium events.

Snow, a Kansas City-born journalist, was one of the first westerners to observe and report on the Chinese revolution of the 1940s and its aftermath. His historic travels and stories, from the front lines to Mao’s encampment, gave western readers their earliest glimpse into this nation on the brink of monumental change.

Snow’s feats became the foundation of an abiding connection that is celebrated with a biennial symposium, alternating between Beijing and Kansas City. The symposium provides a forum for continuing dialogues between scholars and public figures in China and the U.S.; and provides citizens of both countries the opportunity to participate in those dialogues and to forge greater exchange and understanding of each country’s culture.

E. Grey Dimond, a founder of UMKC’s School of Medicine, was instrumental in the creation of the symposium and the foundation. Dimond, a cardiologist, teacher, author, world traveler, artist and medical pioneer, died last year at the age of 94.

Snow, opened Dimond’s mind to China in the early 1960s. Snow- had lived in China for 14 years. Dimond’s wife, Mary Clark Dimond, who died in 1983, created a fund in honor of Snow. The Foundation hosts a number of opportunities to bridge relations in U.S. and China. The foundation is an affiliate constituent organization of UMKC, which holds the Edgar Snow Archives.

Thursday evening’s banquet (tickets required) is at 7 p.m. in the Intercontinental Hotel Ballroom, 401 Ward Parkway. In addition to the video address by President Carter, the program will also feature an address by Julián Zugazagoitia, Director/CEO of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, on “The Vital Role of the Arts in the U.S.-China Relationship.”

Friday events include:

  • Panel discussion, “Arts and Entrepreneurship in Action in Kansas City,” free and open to the public, 9 a.m., Kauffman Foundation Town Hall, 4801 Rockhill Rd.
  • Panel discussion, “UMKC, Edgar Snow and Collaboration with China on Entrepreneurship and the Arts,” free and open to the public, 11 a.m., Bloch Executive Hall, 5108 Cherry St.
  • Series of panel discussions, free and open to the public, on the Downtown Campus for the Arts, Iconic Architecture, and Kansas City-Chinese partnerships on entrepreneurship and the arts, beginning at 2 p.m. in the Chamber of Commerce Boardroom, Union Station, Pershing Road at Main Street.
  • Concert (tickets required), The Conservatory Orchestra performs portions of UMKC Professor Zhou Long’s Pulitzer Prize winning “Madam White Snake;” “Rhapfest” by Xu Changjun, President of the Tianjin Conservatory of Music; and Aaron Copland’s “Appalachian Spring.”  The Chamber Orchestra performs UMKC Professor Chen Yi’s “Ge Xu.” Folly Theatre, 300 W. 12th St.

 

Tianjin Conservatory President Xu Changjun, a noted composer and gifted arts leader, served as a Snow Foundation Visiting Professor at UMKC’s Conservatory in 2006.  During his visiting professorship, President Xu (then Vice-President of the Central Conservatory of Music in Beijing) collaborated with UMKC and the Snow Foundation to establish the Snow Fellowship for composition students. As a result, Dr. Juan Zhou, Kay He, and Amao Wang have come from Beijing to study composition in Kansas City.

For the period of 2012-2015, UMKC’s internationally recognized composition faculty Chen Yi and Zhou Long hold Distinguished Visiting Professorships at the Tianjin Conservatory. Professors Chen Yi and Zhou Long, together with President Xu, have helped to establish a robust schedule of faculty exchanges between the two organizations, including visits by UMKC faculty Bobby Watson, Mary Pat Henry, Sabrina Madison-Cannon, Joseph Parisi, Carter Enyeart, Joseph Genualdi, Steven Davis, Peter Witte and UMKC alumnus, composer Narong Prangcharoen.

In May of 2014, more than 20 UMKC students, faculty, and alumni, including members of the UMKC Wind Symphony, performed at the Tianjin Conservatory’s new music festival. This fall UMKC’s Conservatory hosts Tianjin’s Dean of Dance, Wang Hongyun, and Dean Zhang Beili, the leader of Tianjin’s remarkable Arts Management program.


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