A century of exhibits

There is an image of the bust of Li Dazhao, a founder and pioneer of the CPC, produced by Qian Shaowu who rendered the work the majestic feeling of a stone rising above the ground, symbolizing Li's status as "a cornerstone of the Chinese revolution", Qian once said.

Some works document marked projects in the socialist construction after the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949, such as En Route to Urumqi. Noted artist Ai Zhongxin made the 4-meter-long oil painting in 1954, depicting the construction scene of a section of the Lanzhou-Xinjiang Railway, against a landscape of blue sky, snow-capped mountains and grasslands.

Other pieces present major developments in recent decades, such as Tu Youyou, which is a painting that shows the chemist and Nobel Prize winner and her team working in a lab. Ma Lei, one of the painters, says she and Zhang Caiyi sought to present "a serene, ceremonial atmosphere" in this work to indicate "the long, industrious process of scientific research".