On December 26, 2025, the Wanli Contemporary Art Center will open its doors to the public with its inaugural exhibition, "The Best Time of the Year: Springtime," embarking on a new journey where art and life coexist harmoniously.

The opening ceremony was held on the morning of the 26th in the "Cloud Cave" atrium of the art center. Leaders from the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Culture and Tourism, the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission of Beijing Municipality, Beijing Infrastructure Investment Co., Ltd., Beijing Capital Tourism Group Co., Ltd., Beijing Urban Construction Group Co., Ltd., and the Grand Canal Professional Committee of the China Cultural Relics Society attended the event. After an elegant classical dance performance, a solemn and enthusiastic ribbon-cutting ceremony was held. As the green ribbon, symbolizing new life and hope, was slowly lowered, the Wanli Contemporary Art Center officially set sail.

The Wanli Contemporary Art Center is located on the fifth floor of the Wanli Wangfujing WellTown commercial complex, boasting approximately 5,000 square meters of art space. The art center breaks away from traditional venue operation models.Using contemporary art as a medium, it brings together diverse life scenarios such as exhibitions, music, drama, public education, coffee and cultural and creative products, allowing art to be integrated into daily life, injecting cultural energy into the business district, and creating an open and interactive comprehensive cultural platform.

As a grand opening gift to the sub-center of Beijing, the exhibition "The Best Time of Spring" has attracted much attention. With Wu Hongliang, director of the Beijing Academy of Painting, serving as art advisor, this exhibition presents for the first time a systematic and public display of modern and contemporary Chinese paintings and calligraphy treasures from the Beijing Hotel's collection. It brings together authentic works by dozens of art masters, including Qi Baishi, Xu Beihong, and Huang Yongyu, with works spanning themes such as spring, flowers and trees, elegant gatherings, and landscapes, presenting a flowing visual poem.

That same afternoon, the art center held the opening ceremony for its inaugural exhibition.
In her address, Li Lin, Director of WCCA Wanli Contemporary Art Center, stated: "WCCA Wanli Contemporary Art Center, after three years of preparation, has embodied our beautiful vision of commercial innovation and cultural integration since its inception. We have always cherished our sincerity towards art and our commitment to quality."Committed to creating a lifestyle destination that touches the soul and inspires creativity, the WCCA Bay Area Contemporary Art Center aims to provide the public with a platform to experience art up close and feel its charm, integrating art into daily life and creating an artistic spiritual home outside the city."

In his opening remarks, curator Wang Jinghan explained: "The theme 'Springtime is the Best Time of the Year' contains a dual meaning:Firstly, the opening of the Wanli Contemporary Art Center at the beginning of the new year is like a new life in spring, injecting the city with a continuous and vibrant artistic atmosphere. Secondly, the exhibition takes "spring" as its theme, presenting modern and contemporary Chinese paintings through a scenario-based and youthful narrative, awakening traditional brush and ink from a contemporary perspective, and allowing the traditional culture accumulated within it to be rejuvenated like spring trees meeting rain."

The exhibition unfolds its narrative through "A Day in the Garden" and "A Day in the World," focusing on creating an atmosphere and supplementing it with real-life displays. This allows calligraphy and painting to return to the context of daily life, and uses the names of ci (a type of classical Chinese poetry) titles to connect the five major sections: "Kouxinzhai," "Mantingfang," "Zuihuayin," "Yongyule," and "Wangyuanxing," interpreting Chinese aesthetics from the simple to the profound.
The exhibition, themed "Seeking Spring," moves from elegant desktop decorations to floral shadows in the courtyard, from landscape scrolls to spiritual journeys, inviting visitors to experience the Eastern aesthetic pleasure of "strolling through gardens and walking amidst mountains and rivers" as they move through the ever-changing scenery.

The art center then hosted a salon themed "Flowing Cultural Heritage: The Ancient and Modern Transformation of the Grand Canal and the Local Customs on Both Banks." Ren Deyong, a guardian and storyteller of Beijing's culture; Tang Keyang, a scholar in interdisciplinary architectural research at Tsinghua University, professor and doctoral supervisor at Tsinghua University; Pu Xiaoyi, an architectural critic, member of the Beijing Women Architects Association, and representative of Pei Cobb Freed & Partners China; Waiwai, a trendsetting artist; and Cui Chun, art director of TARGET magazine, attended the salon as guests.

The salon, themed "A Millennium of the Grand Canal," traced the canal's historical role as a national artery and the wisdom of its engineering, analyzing how the canal facilitated economic circulation and the formation of local culture. It explored the artistic expression and aesthetic impact resulting from the fusion of northern and southern cultures along the canal, and collectively reflected on the contemporary paths for the protection, transformation, and innovation of cultural heritage. This dialogue extended the discussion of art to a focus on the profound historical and cultural heritage of the local area, presenting a convergence of ideas that spanned the past and present and integrated multiple disciplines.

The opening of the Wanli Contemporary Art Center is not only the birth of a brand-new art space, but also a positive practice of integrating art with the city, and commerce with cultural life. In the future, it will continue to cultivate the fertile cultural land along the Grand Canal, using art as a link to bring high-quality and diversified cultural experiences to the sub-center of the city.

[Exhibition Information]
Organizer: Wanli Wangfujing WellTown
Supporting Organizations: Beijing Capital Tourism Group Co., Ltd., Beijing Hotel Co., Ltd.
Organizer: Wanli Contemporary Art Center
Art Consultant: Wu Hongliang

Exhibition Title: The Best Time of Year is Spring – Strolling Through Gardens and Mountains
Exhibition Dates: December 2025 – June 2026
Exhibition Venue: Wanli Contemporary Art Center
Exhibition Address: 5th Floor, WellTown, Wanli, Tongzhou District, Beijing

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