Rope Jumpingby Pierre Carron.[Photo by Jiang Dong/China Daily]

Didier Bernheim, a sculptor and featured artist, says the exhibition is derived from a reference to the French Academy of Fine Arts' members as "persons of immortality" in France, and being added to the assemblage of the National Art Museum will make these works "immortal" on a different continent.

Since 2016, the National Art Museum has held three exhibitions dedicated to the creation of French Academy of Fine Arts' members, including the current one.

The museum has also mounted solo exhibitions for several members, including Chu Teh-chun, the late abstract painter who was elected in 1997 to become the first member of Chinese ethnicity at the French Academy, and late master painter Wu Guanzhong, a correspondent member and Chu's schoolmate while studying at the China Academy of Art in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province.