Mr Olaf Kastner (right), President and CEO of BMW Brilliance at The Art of Enlightenment. Photos: Courtesy of BMW China

The wide-ranging exhibition The Art of Enlightenment, jointly presented by the Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, the Staatliche Kunstsammlung Dresden and the Bayerische Staatsgem?ldesammlungen in Munich, finally raised its curtain at the National Museum in Beijing last Friday. The exhibition, the newly refurbished musuem's first, reveals the unfolding artistic and intellectual curiosity and openness of mind which characterized this era in European history. BMW is the first partner of the collaboration and will support promoting with additional formats.

Frank-Peter Arndt, Member of the Management Board of the BMW AG, said: "It is part of our identity to be culturally involved in countries we do business in. Support of The Art of the Enlightenment in Beijing is the BMW Group's most significant cultural commitment in Asia in 2011. Both China and Germany find themselves yet again in times of great change and reorientation. I believe that the liberal discourse and the open exchange between the two nations are both topical and necessary."

"The reopening of the National Museum is a major event that manifests China's profound cultural legacies as well as its success. As a brand with solid artistic and humanistic substances, BMW is very proud to support the reopening of the National Museum and witness Chinese and German cultures join hands here. I believe it will help promote Sino-German cultural exchange and present a top-class spiritual feast to Chinese and world audiences," said Mr Olaf Kastner, President and CEO of BMW Brilliance, at the press conference.

Besides an exchange program for young curators from China and Germany designed to bring both cultures closer, BMW enables a series of concerts entitled The Music of Enlightenment as a highlight of the whole program. The concert started with a featured piece, Beethoven's Eroica on the evening of April 1st. The Dresden State Orchestra conducted by Lorin Maazel performed together with musicians from the Bavarian State Orchestra and the Berlin State Orchestra. Around 800 international guests from politics, industry and culture as well as international media representatives attended.

The Art of Enlightenment

The show, running until the spring of 2012, highlights the development of an artistic and intellectual inquisitiveness and cosmopolitanism that characterized this period in European history. The almost 600 works on loan include masterpieces by Chodowiecki, Friedrich, Gainsborough, Goya, Graff, Greuze, Hogarth, Kauffmann, Pesne, Piranesi, Tischbein, Vernet and Watteau. Covering an area of 2,700 square meters, it is presenting arts of the enlightenment throughout their entire media spectrum - from the masterpieces of painting, sculpture and graphics, handcraft and fashion to valuable scientific instruments. A total of nine sections direct the view to the central topics of 18th century art: "Courtly Life During the Age of Enlightenment", "Perspectives of Knowledge", "The Birth of History", "Distance and Closeness", "Love and Sensitivity", "Back to Nature", "Nocturnal Sides", "Emancipation and the Public" as well as "The Revolution of Art".

"It opens up the visual world of an epoch on the threshold of modernity, whose ideas are to this very day of programmatic significance to art and whose history of influence is to be brought to life in all its diversity for the Chinese public," said curators of three German museums.

This exchange project is being implemented under the patronage of German Federal President Christian Wulff and his Chinese counterpart Hu Jintao. The collaboration is the highlight of the German-Chinese cultural exchange program agreed upon in 2005 by the Chinese Prime Minister Wen Jiabao and Federal Chancellor Angela Merkel.