Artistic College of China Sichuan Art Museum

This guide to the Artistic College of China Sichuan Art Museum in Chengdu starts with a detail almost no passerby notices: the museum's name above the door was brushed by hand by Deng Xiaoping, shortly after he launched China's reform and opening-up. It follows that 1980 encounter with Sichuan's painters at the Jinniu Guest House through to the academy's founding four years later, then reaches back nearly a thousand years earlier to Meng Chang, the last ruler of Later Shu, and the painting academy he founded on this same ground. It leaves you weighing which lineage the small building in front of you really belongs to.