Shenzhen Art Museum

This guide to the Shenzhen Art Museum traces its beginnings in 1976 as the Shenzhen Exhibition Hall, four years before the city itself became a Special Economic Zone, and the years afterward when factory money flooded in but Shenzhen earned the unflattering label cultural desert. It follows the 1985 Shenzhen Art Festival that drew painters and sculptors from across the country, and the works by ink-and-modernism painter Wu Guanzhong that hung on these walls as the museum became a bridge to art in Hong Kong, Macau, and Taiwan. Step back outside afterward to Donghu Park, where the reservoir still gleams through the trees.