Oakland, CA – “Going Away, Coming Home,” a major public art installation created by Mills College art professor Hung Liu and installed last year at Oakland International Airport, has been selected as one of 40 “innovative and exciting examples of American public art” included in the Americans for the Arts “2007 Year in Review” award. Chosen from more than 240 public artworks worldwide, Liu’s project will be highlighted in a CD-ROM of images to be released this summer.

Installed at Oakland International Airport on Tuesday, November 14, 2006, “Going Away, Coming Home” is a160-foot architecturally integrated work presented by the Port of Oakland, Oakland International Airport, and the Oakland Museum of California. It is located across from the moving walkway in the new seven-gate extension in Terminal 2 serving Southwest Airlines.

In creating the project. Liu collaborated intensively with experts from Derix Glasstudios, a 140-year-old, family-owned glass fabrication company near Wiesbaden, Germany. She hand-painted 80 red-crowned cranes onto 64 panels of glass that were then fired, tempered, and eventually paired with background panes depicting views of a satellite photograph ranging from the western United States to the Asia Pacific area.

In Asian cultures, the endangered red-crowned crane is a symbol of peace, purity, wisdom, fidelity, prosperity, and longevity. Liu also uses the cranes to symbolize blessings and safe travel. The imagery derives from the Chinese silk painting “Auspicious Cranes” from the Northern Song dynasty (960–1127). The underlying satellite map begins with a close-up of the Bay Area and expands sequentially away to include the entire Asia Pacific region of the earth, giving viewers a sense of taking flight.

Hung Liu is renowned for combining Western and Chinese traditions to create larger-than-life images of commonplace people lost in the sweep of Chinese history. Born in Changchun, China, in 1948, she came of age during the Cultural Revolution and was forced to serve four years of labor in rural rice fields. She came to the U.S. in 1984 to attend graduate school. Liu’s work is based on hundreds of photographs she discovered on her first return trip to China in 1990. Liu’s art is in the permanent collections of institutions such as the Whitney Museum of American Art (New York), the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the National Museum of American Art (Washington, D.C.), and the Mills College Art Museum.

“Going Away, Coming Home” is one of four site-specific artworks to be unveiled at Oakland International Airport under the Port of Oakland’s Public Art Ordinance of 2002. This innovative policy incorporates public art into all major expansion and development projects at the Port and seeks to provide an opportunity for the public to experience high quality art of enduring value that reflects the diversity of the region served by the Port of Oakland and its people.

Mills College is a nationally renowned, independent liberal arts college offering innovative degree programs for undergraduate women, and graduate degree and certificate programs for women and men. Consistently recognized as one of the top 100 liberal arts colleges in the nation by U.S. News & World Report, Mills currently ranks among the top 20 most diverse liberal arts colleges.

This year, the Washington Monthly College Rankings (September 2006) named Mills a leading liberal arts college based on community service, research spending, quality of preparation for graduate education, and social mobility. In addition, The Princeton Review’s annual guide, the Best 361 Colleges (2007) included Mills for the second year in a row among top U.S. institutions offering students an outstanding undergraduate education.

Nestled in the foothills of Oakland, California, on 135 lush acres, Mills provides a dynamic liberal arts education fostering women’s leadership, social responsibility, and creativity.

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