10 Yuan Centenary of the Central Academy of Fine Arts

The Central Academy of Fine Arts, founded in 1918 as the National School of Fine Arts under Cai Yuanpei's tenure as Minister of Education, was the first government-established Western-style art institution in China. Its centenary in 2018 prompted this commemorative issue, one of several in the People's Bank of China's ongoing series honoring major cultural and academic institutions. The academy's history cuts across nearly every rupture in modern Chinese history — the Republican period, Japanese occupation, and decades of ideological turbulence under which its curriculum was repeatedly overhauled.