Jim Gaffigan "Quality Time Tour" Shanghai

Date: Mar 15 - 8 pm

Venue: Shanghai Centre Theatre

Jim Gaffigan is a Grammy nominated comedian, actor, New York Times bestselling author, top touring performer, and multi-platinum-selling father of five. Gaffigan is known around the world for his unique brand of humor which largely revolves around fatherhood and his observations on life and food. Gaffigan has five comedy specials streaming exclusively on Netflix, and this year he turned down Netflix to release his 2018 special "Noble Ape" direct to fans online. On the small screen Gaffigan and his wife, Jeannie, produced the critically acclaimed semi-fictitious television show, The Jim Gaffigan Show. The series was lauded by The Los Angeles Times as "Fun and Funny," and People Magazine as "One of Summer TV's bright spots". His second book, Food: A Love Story, debuted at No 3 on The New York Times Bestseller's List. Gaffigan is one of only 10 comics in history to sell out Madison Square Garden and a few months prior, Gaffigan had the honor of performing for Pope Francis and over one million festival attendees at the Festival of Families in Philadelphia. Additionally, streaming site Pandora recently announced that Gaffigan is the most popular comic among its users with over 647 million spins to date.

A World Tour of Optic Artistry Show Tribute to Da Vinci

Date: Dec 22-Mar 3 - 10 am

Venue: Shanghai World Financial Center

Through this immersive exhibition experience with strong visual impact, the audience can walk into the inner world of this talented artist. With curiosity and admiration, audiences are expected to understand his paintings, exploration and achievements in the infinite fields of astronomy, geography, medicine, architecture, nature, and water engineering. The story narration is shown on the wall by large-scale projectors, and includes hundreds of HD digital images, full-screen HD videos and 360-degree Dolby surround sound. The exhibits include the HD replica of Da Vinci's masterpieces, represented by 16 oil paintings and nearly a hundred precious manuscripts. There are also tens of machine models invented by Leonardo, which were restored by the Martelli Studio in Italy, according to specific data of the original ones. The exhibition was made as a collaboration between Beijing Great Wonders International and Italy's Cross Media Group. It runs until March 3 in Shanghai, before touring other cities like Shenzhen and Hangzhou.

Cindy Sherman's Solo Exhibition

Date: Dec 22-Jan 13 - 10 am

Venue: Fosun Foundation Shanghai

Fosun Foundation Shanghai presents "Cindy Sherman's First Solo Exhibition" through Jan 13, showing a well-acclaimed collection of the remarkable senior figure of photography in the United States. Bringing together 128 series of photographs and several shooting props along with references spanning different periods, this retrospective survey traces Cindy Sherman's career from the 1970s to the present day and attempts to explore dominant themes in her visual creation throughout four decades. In conjunction with the exhibition, Cindy has nine world's brand new works to be unveiled to the public. She also custom-designed two pieces of wallpapers for Fosun Foundation Shanghai. Considered one of the most influential artists of her generation, Sherman came to prominence in the late 1970s with a group of artists known as the Pictures Generation.

Vision and Reflection: Photographs of China in the 19th Century

Date: Dec 22-30 - 10 am

Venue: Tsinghua University Art Museum

A collection of some of the oldest and rarest photographs of China, Vision and Reflection: Photographs of China in the 19th Century, is made up of 120 photographic specimens taken in the 19th century and have never been exhibited before in Beijing. The photographs were taken by both Chinese and international photographers and give a glimpse at what life in late Qing Dynasty Beijing was like for the subjects depicted as well as what it may have been like to wonder some of the city's historic sights at the time. The rare photographs are only a fraction of the New York-based private Stephan Loewentheil China Photography Collection, which in total includes 13,000 photographs that comprise some of the earliest known paper photographs of Beijing, Shanghai, and Hong Kong.

Russell Young: Superstar in Shanghai

Date: Dec 22-Jan 6 - 10 am

Venue: Modern Art Museum, Shanghai

British-American contemporary artist Russell Young is best known for his compelling, larger-than-life silk-screen paintings of cultural icons. This exhibition presents the artist's work spanning the last two decades, portraying Liz Taylor, James Dean and Bob Dylan alongside political giants John and Jackie Kennedy and showing how Young absorbs, processes and re-contextualizes the imagery of popular culture from the second half of the 20th century onward. This exhibition uses "superstar" as a concept to focus on the exhibition experience, and tries to define the essence of what truly makes a "superstar" and interpret the process of creating a superstar. By presenting screen-printed reproductions of celebrity police mug shots, Young has stripped away their invincible pop status and replaced it with a more human identity, fracturing the conventional celebrity portrait and acknowledging the human beneath the icon, that popular culture often veils.

Piece of Peace World Heritage Exhibit Built with Lego Brick in Shanghai

Date: Dec 22-Feb 24 - 10 am

Venue: Parkside Joy City, Shanghai

Since its 2003 debut in Japan, the Piece of Peace has spent the last 15 years traveling around the world, attracting more than three million visitors. The exhibition showcases a choice selection of 40 world-famous World Heritage sites. At the Piece of Peace Lego World Heritage Exhibition China's you can visit the Statue of Liberty, the Sydney Opera House, the Eiffel Tower, Barcelona's Sagrada Familia in Spain, Moscow's Red Square in Russia, and the Great Wall, and many more famous sights. Each installation ranges from being made by 800 pieces of Lego to astronomical numbers of 100,000 pieces. Not only is the Great Wall of China depicted, Mexico's El Pipila sculpture and Denmark's Roskilde Cathedral are also a topic of creation. All the models are, of course, built with Lego building blocks. The goal in showcasing the sights of the world is to build bridges in a sense of "more building blocks, more peace".

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(China Daily 12/22/2018 page19)