The Wulin Academy of Arts is an independent research institution and honorary society situated on the shores of West Lake, the centre of cultural landscape in the capital of the Southern Song Dynasty. As an assemblage of leading artists, writers, composers and architects on the stage of Chinese culture, it dedicates to promoting the arts of China through rebuilding and reviving its great tradition.

History

In the early 1980s, a group of artists and scholars from China Academy of Art, Zhejiang University, Nankai University and Xiling Seal Art Society drew up a plan to establish an independent institution for Chinese arts and cultural studies on the lakeside of Hangzhou, echoing the Imperial Art Academy founded by Emperor Gaozong on the shores of West Lake and aiming to revive the spirit of Chinese Art.

In 1995, their vision was implemented by the establishment of the Dazhen National Institute and Dazhen Gallery at the antechamber of Imperial Library of Wenlan, standing on the island of Solitary Hill as the predecessor of Wulin Academy. In 1997, as the archaeological excavation and restoration at Imperial Library began, the Institute and Gallery moved out of the island and cooperated with the Government of Gongshu District to run the Hushu Society of Arts. Later in the same year, members of government left Hushu Society and the organization became independent again as Meilan Society of Arts. Since the late 1990s, the Meilan Society has become increasingly influential as it strives to rebuild the disintegrated tradition of Chinese civilization that has been broken off during the New Culture Movement in the mid-1910s and ten years' Cultural Revolution started in 1966.

In the spring of 2002, the Meilan Society was given a new name of Wulin Academy of Arts for Wulin as an ancient name of Hangzhou with puns to the meaning of strength, courage and aggregation. In the year 2006, the academy moved its location to the shores of West Lake from the foot of Wu Mountain, facing the island of Solitary Hill across the lake that witnessed the twisted history of Wulin Academy and its visions of the renaissance of Chinese culture.