Final Years
Even though Qi Gong has remained the best-known calligrapher in the public's eye. Since 1999, Qi Gong also headed the Central Research Institute of Chinese History. The institute currently has 29 members, all leaders in their fields of history, the humanities and the arts.
Despite the fact that he also chaired the Chinese Calligraphers' Association and served as a senior scholar on a team of national experts on cultural relics, Qi Gong was always unassuming, both among his peers and towards other artists. Before his death in 2005, he was the honorary president of Chinese Calligraphers' Association, director of Cultural Relic Authentication Committee of the State Council, professor of Beijing Normal University, and member of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference.
At Beijing Normal University, where Qi Gong taught classical Chinese language and literature for more than 60 years, teachers and students mourned their professor's death. Qi Gong's death was also met with sadness by the public, and has been especially felt by the country's artists, calligraphers, and art collectors.
Read more about this topic: Qigong (artist)
Famous quotes containing the words final and/or years:
“Decisive inventions and discoveries always are initiated by an intellectual or moral stimulus as their actual motivating force, but, usually, the final impetus to human action is given by material impulses ... merchants stood as a driving force behind the heroes of the age of discovery; this first heroic impulse to conquer the world emanated from very mortal forces—in the beginning, there was spice.”
—Stefan Zweig (18811942)
“Every two years the American politics industry fills the airwaves with the most virulent, scurrilous, wall-to-wall character assassination of nearly every political practitioner in the country—and then declares itself puzzled that America has lost trust in its politicians.”
—Charles Krauthammer (b. 1950)