四川大学博物馆

This guide to the Sichuan University Museum in Chengdu follows two rescues of one collection. In 1953, as Chinese universities nationwide were reorganized and told to break up their holdings, five delegations arrived ready to crate and divide everything inside, and a junior researcher named Chen Enyuan argued against the plan in meeting after meeting before taking an unusual step of his own. It reaches back further too, to 1914 and an American missionary curator, David Crockett Graham, who built the collection through teaching donations and a 1933 dig at Sanxingdui cut short almost as soon as it began, after which he kept buying pieces from antique dealers to fill the shelves.