The period between the 16th and 20th centuries was a landmark era for the development of Western art. And the famous Fuji Art Museum in Tokyo Japan has collected no shortage of paintings from this important time. Now, some of these classic pieces are going on display in Beijing at the Tsinghua University Art Museum, and as CGTN's Li Qiong tells us, the city's fans of Western art, are turning out in droves.

This is a western art exhibition collected by a Japanese museum. It displays works by many important western painting masters like Pablo Picasso, Paul Cezanne and Edouard Manet.

From Renaissance, Baroque and Rococo, to Realism, Impressionism, and until the trend of Modernism and Postmodernism, the 60 art pieces outline a 500-year history of western art.

LI QIONG BEIJING "These names on the exhibition wall are seen as icons throughout the development of western art. Their artworks have been explained in different exhibitions by various museums around the world. Different from the work collected by western museums, these pieces selected by the Tokyo Fuji Art Museum, represent the Japanese perspective in understanding western art history."

For art lovers, these artworks are quite an attraction. Ding Nan, an art major graduate, says compared to the exhibitions he visited in western countries, this one doesn't include as many masterpieces, but there's some special glamour.

DING NAN VISITOR "I think one of the highlights of the exhibition is the introduction of every piece. Reading them is like reading a book, telling stories behind each artwork and how important they are to the painters. Many of the western oil painting exhibitions I've seen are based on the time structure of western art history. But here, I see people from the east explain it in a narrative way, based on their own imagination, which is quite fresh."

In response, Chinese curator Yang Dongjiang says this is exactly what a campus museum like Tsinghua University Art Museum has been trying to do, to have more visitors understand art, instead of just appreciating paintings. Curators from China and Japan have selected 60 most classic works of different periods in the 16th to the 20th centuries, and tried to explain them in detail.

YANG DONGJIANG CURATOR "We hope visitors could easily summarize the history of the 500 years of western paintings through our instruction. Western art is a very important collection part of Tokyo Fuji Art museum. Its systematic collections are very helpful for people in the east to study western art."

These collections of Tokyo Fuji Art Museum will be on display at Tsinghua University Art Museum till December 23. LQ, CGTN, BJ.