In a collaboration unusual for Maine’s academic museums, the Bates College Museum of Art and the Institute of Contemporary Art at Maine College of Art, Portland, will jointly present an exhibition by Wenda Gu, one of the most important artists to emerge from China in recent decades.

From Middle Kingdom to Biological Millennium opens at Bates on June 12 and at ICA, site of the opening reception for both institutions, on June 18. Bates hosts the closing reception and a performance by Gu on Oct. 9.

The Bates museum is located in the Olin Arts Center, 75 Russell St., and admission is open to the public at no cost. It is open 10 a.m.-5 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday and is closed Sundays and major holidays. For additional information about the Bates College Museum of Art call 207-786-6158. For more about ICA call 207-879-5742.

At Bates, the Gu exhibition takes place in the museum’s Upper Gallery. In the Lower Gallery, also opening on June 12 are the shows New Acquisitions: Local and Global Contemporary Photography, which closes May 30, 2005, and Marsden Hartley: Image and Identity, which closes Dec. 18 of this year.

Gu was active in the Chinese avant-garde before emigrating to the United States in 1987. He mines tradition and pursues innovation in works that explore globalism, diasporic art and transculturalism to present an idealized unification of humanity.

“Wenda Gu’s work is timely in its ambitious attempt to address in artistic terms the issue of globalism that dominates discussions of contemporary economics, society and culture. The enormous scope of his vision — conceiving of his artwork as existing over time and space and not constrained by convention, language or national boundaries — is remarkable,” writes Mark H.C. Bessire in the exhibition publication, the first major scholarly publication on Gu (MIT Press).

Bessire, director of the Bates museum and former director of ICA, edited the publication and, with counterparts at museums in Kansas and Texas, co-curated the exhibition. It consists of two site-specific installations, two other installations and a performance.

“Words, languages, human hair, glue, calligraphy and stone carving are just some of the components of his installations that catalyze discussion and broaden awareness among viewers,” Bessire writes.

At the Bates museum, Gu will create an installation titled “united nations — 7561 kilometers,” the 20th piece in his “united nations” series. An ongoing worldwide project begun in 1992, the series consists of “monuments” made of human hair, collected from barbershops across the globe, that the artist presses or weaves into bricks, carpets and curtains. The blend of hair from different nations is a metaphor for the mixture of races that Gu predicts will eventually unite humanity into “a brave new racial identity.”

For “united nations — 7561 kilometers,” Gu will construct a “temple” using thin and colored human hair braids. The structure will large enough for viewers to pass through and under the piece. Members of the Bates and local communities will be invited to participate in “united nations — we are united,” the artist’s performance in October.

Among his works at the ICA, Gu will present a second original installation, a new chapter in a series using stone steles marked with retranslated, rewritten Tang Dynasty poetry, as well as rubbings taken from the steles. Inventing and misusing words and language symbols in a variety of languages, Gu embraces mistakes and misunderstandings. He finds absurdity and unexpected beauty in the acceptance of illogical retranslations.

The project was supported by The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts and the National Endowment for the Arts.

In the museum’s Lower Gallery, New Acquisitions: Local and Global Contemporary Photography presents American, African and Chinese artists whose work transcends its local origins to achieve global relevance. The American photographers include Melonie Bennett, Tanja Hollander, Jocelyn Lee, Scott Peterman and Sa Schloff, all associated with the Bakery Photo Cooperative in Portland.

The Chinese photographers include the seven who showed work during the winter in the museum’s acclaimed exhibition, as well as exhibit curator Gu Zheng. (Here’s the Documenting China press release and here’s the museum’s description, with a slide show.) The breadth of contemporary African photography is represented by Samuel Fosso, Malick Sidibe, Jurgen Schadeberg, Bernie Searle (performance artist) and Sukhdeo Bobson Mohanlall.

Also in the Lower Gallery, Marsden Hartley: Image and Identity taps the museum’s collection of materials pertaining to Hartley. In fact, the museum was established as a repository for the collection of drawings, photographs and documents by or about this key 20th-century modernist, a Lewiston native. Evidence of Hartley’s efforts to establish his name and locate himself within the collective memory of the public, his friends and family turns up throughout the collection.

Hartley’s personal archive not only provides ample information about the artist’s life, relationships and interests, but demonstrates an attempt to construct both a personal history and a public identity. The collection includes a large number of photographs, both personal snapshots and formal portraits by George Platt Lynes and Alfredo Valente.

It’s evident that photography allowed Hartley to remake himself in any image he desired: New York modernist, European aesthete, native Mainer. Hartley’s ongoing struggle to find his place — geographically, psychologically, artistically and as a gay man — is documented in his writing, reflected in his work and revealed through a study of his archive.

A discrepancy in the published times for the Jan. 16 opening lecture and reception for a Bates College Museum of Art exhibition has resulted in a schedule adjustment that may affect the plans of your art reviewers and readers.

The reception for the exhibition, Documenting China: Contemporary Photography and Social Change, will begin at 5 p.m. on Friday, Jan. 16, in the museum, Olin Arts Center, 75 Russell St.

A lecture by exhibit curator Gu Zheng will take place at 7 p.m. in Room 104, Olin Arts Center.

In addition, the museum has scheduled two events connected with the exhibition to take place on Feb. 6 in Room 104, Olin Arts Center. At 5 p.m., Wu Hung, professor in the College of the Humanities at the University of Chicago and author of Exhibiting Experimental Art in China (University of Chicago Press, 2001) offers a lecture.

At 7 p.m., Chinese Art Explodes Onto the Scene, a roundtable discussion of contemporary Chinese art and photography, features Wu Hung; Brian Wallis, chief curator, International Center of Photography, New York; and Gu Zheng. Mark Bessire, director of the Bates College Museum of Art, moderates.

For your convenience, previously released details of the exhibition follow:

Documenting China: Contemporary Photography and Social Change runs through March 28. The museum is open to the public at no charge.

Documenting China showcases the work of seven photographers, including Zhou Hai, whose exhibition The Unbearable Heaviness of Industry was reviewed by The New York Times in August 2003. Depicting people at home, at work and in public, the Documenting China images are fresh, blunt and compelling.

In her preface to the exhibition catalog, Bates President Elaine Tuttle Hansen writes, “The exhibition introduces a new and critical generation of Chinese photographers to American audiences while it raises vexing questions about the impact of urbanization on societies and individuals.”

In addition to Zhou Hai, participating photographers are:

Liu Xiaodi, a painter by training who shot his Village series while he was a student doing fieldwork;

Jiang Jian, director of the photography department at the Henan Institute of Art, Zhengzhou. He specializes in photographing peasants in their homes in central China;

Zhang Xinmin, who concentrates on peasant immigrants in China’s cities;

Luo Yongjin, who depicts the city of Luoyang, formerly a grand imperial capital and now a middling industrial city;

Lu Yuanmin, who documents the impacts of China’s Reform era on middle class domestic life in the booming city of Shanghai;

and Zhou Ming, who captures Shanghai street and nightlife scenes.

The seven will donate their images from the exhibition to the Bates museum’s permanent collection. Museum Director Mark Bessire, pointing to China’s considerable and still-expanding role in international politics and the global economy, says that “in 50 years these photos will be unique in recording China at the millennium.”

“They’re very important to our collection because we now have seven different artists’ work that records the cultural and economic changes that have been influencing China for the past 10 years,” he says. “Rather than just one point of view, we get seven.”

Documenting China appears next at the China Institute in New York City from June 24 through July 23, 2004.

China is a growing presence in Bates’ visual-art offerings, from a site-specific calligraphy installation by Xu Bing in 2000 to next summer’s major exhibition by the artist Wenda Gu. Two displays of photographs taken by Bates students in China and Tibet during the past semester open simultaneously with Documenting China at two locations, the Chase Hall Gallery and the student-run Ronj coffeehouse.

Gu organized Documenting China in collaboration with Bates College Museum of Art staff and two faculty members, Assistant Professor of Chinese John Yu Zou and Associate Professor of Economics Margaret Maurer-Fazio, chair of the college’s Asian studies program. Gu will work with Professor Zou this winter in his course “Chinese Culture and Agrarian Society,” as well as with students in photography and economics.

Gu is vice president of the Asian Society of Photographers and the author of several books, including The Practice of Modern Photography in the 20th Century (Industrial Publisher, 2002); Chinese Perspectives on Western Cityscape (Liaoning Fine Arts Press, 2002) and The Nude in Retrospect: 150 Years of Photography (Guangdong Traveler’s Press, 1999). He has won numerous national photography awards in China, including the prestigious Ministry of Culture Gold Medal.

He co-curated the first Asian Photo Biennale, Seoul, in 2002, and chaired the 2001 Yipin International Photography Festival, Shanghai. His doctorate is in cultural anthropology from Japan’s University of Osaka.

Funds from a four-year grant by the Freeman Foundation supported the production of the four-color catalog and Gu’s residency at Bates this winter. With offices in New York City and Stowe, Vt., the Freeman Foundation was created by AIG Insurance Company co-founder Mansfield Freeman to promote better relationships and understanding between the United States and the countries of East Asia. In December 2001, the foundation gave Bates a four-year, $400,000 grant intended to enhance and energize the study of Asia and Asian culture across the curriculum.

The Bates College Museum of Art is open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday, and is closed for major holidays. For more information, please call 207-786-6158.

Focusing on the impacts of urbanization and industrialization in China, a nationally significant exhibition of documentary images by Chinese photographers opens at the Bates College Museum of Art with a lecture and reception at 5 p.m. Friday, Jan. 16, 2004.

Documenting China: Contemporary Photography and Social Change was curated by Gu Zheng, an expert in documentary photography and associate professor of journalism at Fudan University, Shanghai. Gu offers the opening lecture in Room 104 of the Olin Arts Center, 75 Russell St., which is also the museum building.

The show runs through March 28. The museum is open to the public at no charge.

Documenting China showcases the work of seven photographers, including Zhou Hai, whose exhibition The Unbearable Heaviness of Industry was reviewed by The New York Times in August 2003. Depicting people at home, at work and in public, the Documenting China images are fresh, blunt and compelling.

In her preface to the exhibition catalog, Bates President Elaine Tuttle Hansen writes, “The exhibition introduces a new and critical generation of Chinese photographers to American audiences while it raises vexing questions about the impact of urbanization on societies and individuals.”

In addition to Zhou Hai, participating photographers are:

• Liu Xiaodi, a painter by training who shot his “Village” series while he was a student doing fieldwork;

• Jiang Jian, director of the photography department at the Henan Institute of Art, Zhengzhou. He specializes in photographing peasants in their homes in central China;

• Zhang Xinmin, who concentrates on peasant immigrants in China’s cities;

• Luo Yongjin, who depicts the city of Luoyang, formerly a grand imperial capital and now a middling industrial city;

• Lu Yuanmin, who documents the impacts of China’s Reform era on middle class domestic life in the booming city of Shanghai; and Zhou Ming, who captures Shanghai street and nightlife scenes.

The seven will donate their images from the exhibition to the Bates museum’s permanent collection. Museum Director Mark Bessire, pointing to China’s considerable and still-expanding role in international politics and the global economy, says that “in 50 years these photos will be unique in recording China at the millennium.”

“They’re very important to our collection because we now have seven different artists’ work that records the cultural and economic changes that have been influencing China for the past 10 years,” he says. “Rather than just one point of view, we get seven.”

At 7 p.m. Friday, Feb. 6, Gu is joined for a conversation titled Chinese Art Explodes Onto the Scene by Wu Hung and Christopher Phillips, curators of New Photography from China, an exhibition to be presented next summer by the International Center of Photography, New York City.

Documenting China appears next at the China Institute in New York City from June 24 through July 23, 2004.

China is a growing presence in Bates’ visual-art offerings, from a site-specific calligraphy installation by Xu Bing in 2000 to next summer’s major exhibition by the artist Wenda Gu. Two displays of photographs taken by Bates students in China and Tibet during the past semester open simultaneously with “Documenting China” at two locations, the Chase Hall Gallery and the student-run Ronj coffeehouse.

Gu organized Documenting China in collaboration with Bates College Museum of Art staff and two faculty members, Assistant Professor of Chinese John Yu Zou and Associate Professor of Economics Margaret Maurer-Fazio, chair of the college’s Asian studies program. Gu will work with Professor Zou this winter in his course “Chinese Culture and Agrarian Society,” as well as with students in photography and economics.

Gu is vice president of the Asian Society of Photographers and the author of several books, including The Practice of Modern Photography in the 20th Century (Industrial Publisher, 2002); Chinese Perspectives on Western Cityscape (Liaoning Fine Arts Press, 2002) and The Nude in Retrospect: 150 Years of Photography (Guangdong Traveler’s Press, 1999). He has won numerous national photography awards in China, including the prestigious Ministry of Culture Gold Medal.

He co-curated the first Asian Photo Biennale, Seoul, in 2002, and chaired the 2001 Yipin International Photography Festival, Shanghai. His doctorate is in cultural anthropology from Japan’s University of Osaka.

Funds from a four-year grant by the Freeman Foundation supported the production of the four-color catalog and Gu’s residency at Bates this winter. With offices in New York City and Stowe, Vt., the Freeman Foundation was created by AIG Insurance Company co-founder Mansfield Freeman to promote better relationships and understanding between the United States and the countries of East Asia. In December 2001, the foundation gave Bates a four-year, $400,000 grant intended to enhance and energize the study of Asia and Asian culture across the curriculum.

The Bates College Museum of Art is open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday, and is closed for major holidays. For more information, please call 207-786-6158.

Focusing on the impacts of urbanization and industrialization in China, an exhibition of documentary images by seven Chinese photographers opens at the Bates College Museum of Art on Jan. 9, 2004.

Documenting China: Contemporary Photography and Social Change runs through March 28. The museum is open to the public at no charge.

Gu Zheng, a journalism professor prominent in China’s recent documentary photography movement, organized Documenting China in collaboration with the Bates College Museum of Art and the college’s Asian studies program. In residence with support from the Freeman Fund at Bates, Gu will teach here during the winter semester.

The participating photographers are:

Liu Xiaodi, a painter by training who shot his “Village” series while he was a student doing fieldwork;

Jiang Jian, director of the photography department at the Henan Institute of Art, Zhengzhou. He specializes in photographing peasants in their homes in central China;

Zhang Xinmin, who concentrates on peasant immigrants in China’s cities;

Luo Yongjin, who depicts the city of Luoyang, formerly a grand imperial capital and now a middling industrial city;

Zhou Hai, perhaps the best-known in this country of the seven photographers, thanks to his renowned solo show “Heavy Industries”;

Lu Yuanmin, who documents the impacts of China’s Reform era on middle class domestic life in the booming city of Shanghai;

and Zhou Min, who offers Shanghai street and nightlife scenes.

Gu is associate professor of journalism at Fudan University, Shanghai, and vice president of the Asian Society of Photographers. He is the author of several books, including The Practice of Modern Photography in the 20th Century (Industrial Publisher, 2002); Chinese Perspectives on Western Cityscape (Liaoning Fine Arts Press, 2002) and The Nude in Retrospect: 150 Years of Photography (Guangdong Traveler’s Press, 1999). He has won numerous national photography awards in China, including the prestigious Ministry of Culture Gold Medal.

Gu co-curated the first Asian Photo Biennale, Seoul, in 2002, and chaired the 2001 Yipin International Photography Festival, Shanghai. His doctorate is in cultural anthropology from Japan’s University of Osaka.

With offices in New York City and Stowe, Vt., the Freeman Foundation was created by AIG Insurance Company co-founder Mansfield Freeman to promote better relationships and understanding between the United States and the countries of East Asia. In December 2001, the foundation gave Bates a four-year, $400,000 grant intended to enhance and energize the study of Asia and Asian culture across the curriculum.

A color catalog with an essay by Gu will accompany Documenting China. The exhibition itself travels to the China Institute in New York City in summer 2004.

The Bates College Museum of Art is open from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday.