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Liu Shiming Art Foundation ｜ Liu Shiming Art Gallery

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Preserving Liu Shiming’s legacy
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From RESEARCH to PUBLICATION. A closer look at Liu Shiming: Sculpting Empathy.

This video brings together interview footage and excerpts from Richard’s book launch talk, following the development of the monograph from early research to publication. Richard Vine, former managing editor of Art in America and author of New China, New Art (2011), has long worked on Chinese contemporary art. He first traveled to Beijing in fall 2023 to begin archival research, building on this background. At the outset, he noted, “this is not what I usually write about,” but found that “the more time I spent with the work, the more it started to speak to me,” shaping the direction of the project.

The book developed through over two years of research and writing, drawing on primary materials, translated texts, and historical sources. It brings together Liu Shiming’s life and work with a broader account of 20th-century Chinese social and political history, alongside art historical analysis. After the manuscript was completed, the project moved into production, with nearly a year of collaboration with design studio to develop the book’s structure and visual form, followed by coordination with publishers. The publication was later presented at the London Book Fair.

Richard Vine describes a shift in Liu Shiming’s work from “programmatic art according to an ideology” to direct observation of everyday life. He explains the title through this perspective, noting that “empathy is when you share that grief,” pointing to the way the artist engages with lived experience and human connection. by @lsmartfund

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6 months ago

Liu Shiming: Art Returns to Life

This video traces the life and artistic journey of Liu Shiming, from his early training at the Central Academy of Fine Arts to the years he spent living and working in the countryside, where his understanding of sculpture began to take shape.

Drawing from everyday life—farmers, workers, ordinary gestures—Liu developed a practice grounded in memory, observation, and lived experience. His later work, shaped through teaching and reflection, centers on movement, vitality, and the human spirit.

For Liu Shiming, sculpture was never separate from life. It was a way of recording the world as he experienced it, and of staying connected to the people and moments that defined his time. by @lsmartfund

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6 months ago

We are pleased to announce the launch of the Liu Shiming Internship, established in partnership with the Guggenheim New York @guggenheim !

Beginning Summer 2026, one Liu Shiming Intern will join the Guggenheim’s Summer Internship Program each year, gaining direct experience within a leading institution for modern and contemporary art. This opportunity will transition into a permanent endowment in 2027, ensuring sustained annual support in perpetuity.

Through this collaboration, we are expanding our commitment to supporting emerging arts professionals and advancing educational access across global cultural institutions.

Application details are on the Guggenheim’s website.

Application link will be avaliable in the bio soon. by @lsmartfund

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7 months ago

At The Art of Intimacy: Symposium on Art, Design, and Theory in Venice, artists, designers, and thinkers came together to consider how intimacy extends beyond the private sphere, becoming a shared experience through art.

This exploration resonates with Liu Shiming’s artistic practice, which found meaning in the fleeting moments of everyday life. Through his close observation of ordinary people and their relationships, Liu transformed personal encounters into sculptures that speak to a broader human experience.

Held in conjunction with Intimate Unthinkables at @ecc_italy, the symposium invited a deeper reflection on how art preserves moments of tenderness and vulnerability, and how individual experiences can connect us across time and place.

Presented by Future Cities; Livable Futures in collaboration with the Liu Shiming Art Foundation. by @lsmartfund

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2 days ago

Meet Carla Habierska, the 2026 Liu Shiming Scholar at the Academy of Fine Arts in Warsaw (@aspwwarszawie)—the first at the Academy and the 103rd worldwide.

With roots in more than 250 years of art education, the Academy connects traditional training with contemporary experimentation. The Liu Shiming Scholarship supports students in its Faculty of Sculpture, helping them develop their practice and create new work.

Carla’s Polish-Peruvian heritage informs her explorations of identity, family, and memory across sculpture, ceramics, printmaking, drawing, and photography. In Identity Block, she maps the people and memories that furnish a single mind. In Sisters, she transforms siblings’ shared stories into sculptural forms. Generational Tower and First Generation extend these questions into family and lineage.

Through partnerships with art schools worldwide, the Liu Shiming Scholarship Program carries forward Liu Shiming’s legacy by investing in the education and creative development of emerging artists across cultures. We are proud to welcome Carla to this growing community.

Swipe to explore her work! by @lsmartfund

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8 days ago

For Liu Shiming, sculpture was closely tied to observation—of the people around him, their individual features, expressions, and presence. In his various female busts, including his portrait of Rong Yijie, portraiture becomes more than a record of physical likeness. Through modeling in clay, Liu captures a sense of personality and immediacy, allowing each figure to retain a distinctly human presence.

Seen together, these works reflect Liu Shiming’s enduring attention to ordinary people and individual lives. Rather than idealizing his subjects, he approached them with intimacy and directness, finding significance in the faces and people he encountered.

The works are on view in Intimate Unthinkables at Palazzo Mora (@ecc_italy), Venice, May 9 – November 22, 2026. by @lsmartfund

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11 days ago

We were delighted to welcome a group of Liu Shiming's family and longtime friends to the gallery, some of whom also appear in the sculptures on view.

For many of them, these were pieces they had grown up around, watched take shape in Liu Shiming's studio, lived alongside for years before they ever hung in a gallery. Walking through the space, people kept stopping in front of familiar pieces to tell a story: what the room looked like when it was made, what was happening that week, small details that only come from actually having been there.

It was a good reminder that these sculptures did not start as abstractions. They grew out of an actual life, actual people, and some of those people were standing in the gallery with us. by @lsmartfund

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12 days ago

Our Foundation is a proud supporter of KAWS: Art & Comix, now on view at ALBERTINA MODERN (@albertinamuseum) in Vienna through September 27.The exhibition traces the dialogue between comics and fine art, placing KAWS (@kaws) alongside artists including Jean-Michel Basquiat, Keith Haring, Roy Lichtenstein, and Öyvind Fahlström, among many others, in a show that spans decades of work exploring what happens when a comic character becomes a subject worthy of the museum wall.

Catch it before it closes!
© Albertina Museum, Photos: Rainer Iglar by @lsmartfund

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24 days ago

Now available at Barnes & Noble: Liu Shiming: Sculpting Empathy, the monograph by Richard Vine tracing Liu Shiming's life and artistic journey, from his training at the Central Academy of Fine Arts in Beijing to the intimate, humanist sculptures that came to define his work.

Pick up a copy in stores today! by @lsmartfund

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a month ago

Thank you to everyone who applied to the 2026 Liu Shiming Artist Grants and Distinguished Educator Award. We were moved by the range and depth of work submitted from 106 countries and regions.

Recipients will be announced in January 2027. Stay tuned! by @lsmartfund

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a month ago

On the second floor of Palazzo Mora, "Intimate Unthinkables" brings together the quiet yet powerful rhythms of women’s everyday lives across distant geographies and shifting times.

Presented by Liu Shiming Art Foundation, the exhibition brings together the works of Adrian Elisheva Parr Zaretsky (A.Z) and Liu Shiming, creating an encounter between East and West, individual and collective, presence and disappearance.

Rooted in Chinese tradition and influenced by French realism, Liu Shiming’s sculptures portray the dignity and hard labour of rural women amid social change, while A.Z’s contemporary portraits confront gendered violence and the possibility of renewal.

Together, the works move beyond representation to explore intimacy, endurance, care, conflict, and agency, offering a shared vision of women not as subjects of spectacle, but as witnesses and makers.

And a few moments from the performance during the opening days ✨

azcontemporaryartist
@lsmartfund
#PersonalStructures2026 #ECCItaly by @lsmartfund

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a month ago

Liu Shiming, In Love, Bronze, 1983.

Made at a time when affection wasn't often shown openly, the sculpture reflects something Liu returned to throughout his life, watching people closely, and finding meaning in the small, unguarded moments between them. There's nothing staged about it. It reads less like a statement and more like something quietly true.
In Love is on view now in Intimate Unthinkables, curated by Adrian Elisheva Parr Zaretsky (A.Z.) and shown alongside her own work as part of Personal Structures 2026 (@ecc_italy) at Palazzo Mora, Venice, May 9 – November 22, 2026. by @lsmartfund

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a month ago