National Art Museum of China

NAMOC, the National Art Museum of China, is Beijing's largest state collection of modern and contemporary Chinese art. It opened in 1963 in a palatial building with a sweeping yellow-glazed tile roof on Wusi Dajie, the city's old cultural quarter. Holdings run to roughly 130,000 works, including ink paintings by Qi Baishi and Huang Binhong, oils by Xu Beihong and a substantial section of contemporary installation art from after 1978. Rotating shows range from Tang-dynasty woodblocks to retrospectives of living photographers. For visitors stopping at the Reform-era architecture on the edge of the diplomatic quarter, it offers the broadest cross-section of twentieth and twenty-first century Chinese art in the country. Admission is free with advance booking and passport.