Alexandra Munroe

Alexandra Munroe is Senior Curator of Asian Art at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. Her exhibitions include a major retrospective of the work of Cai Guo-Qiang, a commissioned installation by Anish Kapoor titled Anish Kapoor: Memory, and a historical survey examining the influence of Asian art and thought on American modernism titled The Third Mind: American Artists Contemplate Asia, 1860 to 1989, which is on view through April. She is an award-winning curator and former museum director.

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Senior Curator of Asian Art at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum

The Beijing Summer Olympics' Opening Ceremony aired to one billion people, surpassing even Mao’s wildest dreams of totalitarian reach. The 90-minute spectacle, featuring 14,000 performers and 34,000 fireworks, was billed as a dramatization of 5,000 years of Chinese civilization, all under the Beijing motto One World One Dream. To many of us China watchers, Beijing’s feat felt eerie. China’s Great Leap: The Beijing Olympic Games and Olympian Human Rights Challenges by Minky Wordon, with an introduction by Nicholas Kristof, explains why. Its 24 essays by leading experts on Chinese human rights document how the Chinese government used the Olympics to stare down, roll back, and basically obliterate any real attack on its human-rights violations, including Tibetan dissent. The government seized upon the Olympics to galvanize national pride and project a modern, open spirit to the world. But behind the perfect chorography, the old China holds strong—not quite modern, not quite open, defiantly ebullient.

1:26 pm, Feb 16, 2009

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Tibetan Dissent, Chinese Human Rights, Minky Wordon, The Beijing Olympic Games And Olympian Human Rights Challenges, China's Great Leap, One World One Dream, Totalitarian Reach, Mao, Beijing Olympics Opening Ceremony, The Beijing Summer Olympics, Alexandra Munroe, Nicholas Kristof, Beijing Olympics

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