The National Art Museum of China is celebrating its 50th birthday. Lin Qi reports its mission to transmit culture looks set to expand further in the future.

The 37-meter-long arced wall inside the National Art Museum of China is seen as one of the country's most important exhibition spaces. The wall, which is in the middle of the first floor's center hall, is usually reserved for the best work of blue-chip artists.

At the current exhibition that celebrates NAMOC's 50th birthday, there are no paintings hanging on the wall.

Instead, curators have listed the names of several hundred major exhibitions at NAMOC since its opening. On the arced wall, in big characters, they list the names of dozens of people who have made donations.

The exhibition, titled Along with the Times, is a retrospective with 666 paintings, prints, sculptures, caricatures, installations and mixed-media works from NAMOC's collections, which together narrate a condensed history of Chinese art in the 20th century.

It features such well-known paintings as Luo Zhongli's Father and Xu Beihong's Horse, as well as masterpieces that are on show for the first time, like Jiang Zhaohe's hand scroll Refugees.

The exhibition occupies NAMOC's 14 halls but reflects just the tip of the iceberg, as the museum has 110,000 stored works, which range from ancient Chinese paintings and calligraphy, to modern fine arts, folk and Western art.