9 PM on PBS: I M Pei documentary

shilling recidivist
Tonight is the night for the Anne Makepeace film that I hit last week, Mar. 24, 2010, shilling for I M Pei.  American Masters’ I. M. Pei   Building China Modern will air on local Channel 13 WNET at 9 PM and will then be available on-line for 90 days (that, and other information in the link). The quick-and-dirty Manhattan Loft Guy summary:

The documentary is about I. M. Pei and his return to China to design an art museum in Suzhou, the 2,500 year-old city that his family had lived in for 600 years before his father brought him to America in the 1930s. Of course there are fascinating details about what the commission meant to him at this stage of his career (and to the local Chinese) and about his attempts to begin a new Chinese architecture while working within (sometimes very rigid) bounds of tradition and regulation ‘on the ground’ in China. But what interested me most was how much fun this 92 year-old man was having, and how humble he seems.

Tune in tonight!

© Sandy Mattingly 2010