True to its cosmopolitan spirit, ISI Florence is seeking out academic partnerships in the Far East. After collaborating with Villa I Tatti (The Harvard Center for Italian Renaissance Studies) on a program for Chinese and Taiwanese visiting scholars in summer 2013, ISI Director Stefano U. Baldassarri taught a class on Florentine Renaissance art and literature at the prestigious Sichuan University in Chengdu this past July. Kindly invited by Prof. He Ping (History Dept., Sichuan University), Prof. Baldassarri introduced some 130 local students to the most famous artworks and writings from Giotto and Petrarch to Vasari and Michelangelo. After this 2-week course in Chengdu, on Sept. 17-19 he attended an international conference in Yinchuan titled “The Dimension of Civilization”. Superbly organized by Prof. Lu Peng (Director, Yinchuan Museum of Contemporary Art) the conference, whose proceedings include an essay by Prof. Baldassarri on Florentine city-views and cartography in the fifteenth century, has brought together scholars from America, Europe, Asia, and Oceania to discuss East-West cultural relationships from the Middle Ages to the present.