BEIJING OLYMPIC SCULPTURE NEWS

This sculpture, titled “Olympic Flame,” was crafted by artists in China’s Jilin province and chosen as one of nearly 300 winners from a pool of more than 2,400 entries.  View the full gallery of photos here on Web a site hosted by China.org.

A traveling exhibition of 110 individually designed landscape sculptures promoting the 2008 Beijing Summer Olympic Games will make its first stop of the new year at Atlanta’s Centennial Olympic Park. 

An opening ceremony for the Beijing 2008 Olympic Landscape Sculpture International Tour is scheduled for 11 a.m. Friday to kick off the exhibition’s 10-day stay in Georgia from Jan. 11-20.

When the exhibition made its first U.S. showing last month in Washington, Zhou Wenzhong, China’s ambassador to the U.S., hailed it as a symbol of the cultural understanding fostered by the games.

“I hope that this tour exhibition can serve as a medium that brings American and Chinese people closer together on promoting the optimistic, positive and healthy spirit of the Olympic Games,” Mr. Zhou said in a press release.

Qiao Hong, China’s consul general in Houston, is expected to make another trip to Atlanta to speak at the event, and city and state officials will be on hand to help spark the latest in a series of Olympic ties with Beijing.

As the host city for the 1996 summer Olympic Games, Atlanta has been one of many cities advising Beijing in its preparation for the Olympics, particularly with regard to security and operating efficiency in the airport.

This year’s Olympics, through which many believe China aims to declare its validity as a world superpower, have planted the Asian nation firmly in the international spotlight.  The entries in the sculpture exhibition underwent comparable international scrutiny on their way to Atlanta.

The design contest began Aug. 8, 2005, three years to the day before the opening ceremony of the Beijing Games.  More than 2,400 designs were submitted from artists representing 90 countries, and 290 were chosen by a panel of 17 experts from Austria, Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom, the U.S. and other countries.

After a June 2007 unveiling in the Chinese capital, the nearly 300 exhibits visited cities throughout China.

Before the international tour began, the list of traveling sculptures was whittled to 110, and two replicas of each were made so that the three sets could make simultaneous exhibitions in cities across the globe.