In the final hours of 2010, en route from Philadelphia to Shanghai, I received a company e-mail from our chairman promulgating a change of slogan for Modern Media’s flagship publication, Modern Weekly. Ten years on, no longer would it offer the promise of “Read Modern Weekly, Keep Up With the World.” Instead, by changing one…

The question of space for art in China is one of the most expansive around. These days, so are the spaces—or at least so the adage goes. But beneath the proliferation of venues in the last decade or so there lies a fundamental lack, less a function of China than of our general global condition,…

When the harvest moon comes out, we feel the pangs of place. American schools hold homecomings. Jews build booths. Chinese families reunite to stare into the sky. There is something fundamentally human in the autumn air, the feeling that things have turned, cyclically, but irrevocably all the same. The fruits of the bygone summer are…

This is an issue about “art youth,” a designation that sounds much more natural in Chinese. It’s hard to convey all the connotations it instantly summons, but for starters, it doesn’t mean “young artist.” It’s a subcategory of the “arts and culture youth,” a stock character in the contemporary urban imagination who sports Warrior sneakers…

As we were nearing press time a few days ago, it occurred to us to try and capture one specific example of China’s waxing presence in Africa, the Parc Culturel et ses Sept Merveilles de Dakar, near the Senegalese capital’s bustling seaport. There, Chinese laborers, backed by Chinese investment and in keeping with Chinese foreign…

On our cover this month you’ll see an image that might not make sense at first. From a corner, our photographer captures the workshop in which sculptor Zhan Wang’s stainless steel scholar’s rocks come to life. Under Zhan’s direction, a team of highly skilled workers bring these unlikely objects into existence, first hammering out shapes…