‘Stories From China’s Past’ at UCLA’s Wight Gallery

Artifacts from ancient tombs and the tombs themselves tell us most of what we know about Chinese culture. But these objects and monuments can speak to day-to-day, worldly life, as shown in an exhibit opening Tuesday at UCLA’s Wight Art Gallery.

“Stories From China’s Past: Han Dynasty Pictorial Tomb Reliefs and Archaeological Objects From Sichuan Province, People’s Republic of China” illuminates the lives of Han Dynasty people, from zither players to horsemen.

“The great thing about the objects in the show is that they all reflect commonplace, everyday life,” says gallery education assistant David Fears.

The prosperous Han Dynasty (206 BC-AD 220) was “incredibly diverse and its people had great vitality,” Fears says. “Their wealth was based on trade across the Silk Route with the West and domestic agriculture, hunting and mining. The exhibit shows this with works depicting everything from hunting to entertainments performed at banquets by musicians and dancers.”

About 100 objects make up the exhibit. They include pictorial tomb reliefs and rubbings from tomb carvings, sculptures of individuals and animals made of pottery, wood and stone, and a 6-foot-long reconstructed Han tomb model. Even a bronze “money tree” with images of gods shows some of them engaged in human activities.

“Bronze casting and stone carving and the use of numerous motifs existed before the Han people,” Fears says. “But they bring a vitality to their art--their figures are all very active and there’s little sense of stylized formality compared to other regions of China even at the same time. It’s really their delight in eating, drinking and merry-making that distinguishes their art.”

The exhibit, through May 15, was organized by the Chinese Culture Center of San Francisco in cooperation with the Sichuan Cultural Department.

Running concurrently at the Wight is “Francesco Clemente: The Departure of the Argonaut.” This exhibit presents the first English translation of a World War I diary kept by Alberto Savinio, an Italian composer, writer and artist, illustrated with lithographs by Italian painter Francesco Clemente.

WHAT IS ART?: By slashing the number of grant dollars available to San Francisco’s prominent Exploratorium Museum of science and art, the California Arts Council has furthered the debate over the greater use of controversial formula funding of arts groups, an issue of concern nationwide.

At its March meeting, the council deemed that only 50% of the activities at the Bay Area museum, a self-described “museum of science, art and human perception,” are arts related and that the institution therefore may base its requests on half of its budget.

The move was founded on a new system that bases the amount of grants to the state’s largest nonprofit arts groups partially on the size of their budgets. For fiscal 1988-89, this means the museum may apply for $106,000 instead of $150,000.

Traditionally, council Support to Prominent Organizations grants were based not on budget size but on the judgments, subject to council members’ approval, of panels of peers in various arts disciplines who rate artistic merit and other non-economic considerations. Under these guidelines, the Exploratorium annually won some of the council’s largest grants, averaging $150,000 each, since 1979.

However, other council grant categories have long used the formula system.

“The formula guidelines for (prominent organization) grants was a recommendation (of the state’s artistic community), and was set up to assure that everyone was treated equally,” said council Chairman Harvey Stearn after the meeting in Riverside County.

The field doesn’t seem entirely satisfied with the new guidelines, however.

“The council is seeking to curtail and limit demand (for grants) more and more by forcing arts organizations to apply for funds on a formula,” said Patricia Steinhart, development director for the California Confederation for the Arts, the state’s arts advocacy organization.

Artists and arts organizations around the country expressed similar concerns in March when Frank Hodsoll, chairman of the National Endowment for Arts, proposed that the organization use computerized data on the size of an institution’s budget as an aid to peer panel grant evaluations. Grants have previously been determined only by peer panel recommendations as accepted or rejected by the chairman.