A CURATOR from Bury has helped pierce the “bamboo curtain” to allow a collection of 83 paintings from across Greater Manchester to go on show in China.

Tony Trehy came up with the idea of raising cash by arranging for the art collections to go “on tour.”

After being funded by the British Arts Council, Tony travelled to Beijing and Shanghai and met with the Beijing World Art Museum, who signed up to take the collection for £150,000.

He said: “I had a feeling that the negotiations would go well when I arrived because there was a poster outside the gallery announcing the exhibition in November with a picture of our Turner and Bury Art Gallery.”

Bury will get around £15,000 from the show which is called "Toward Modernity: 300 Years of British Art" and it will be on tour for 14 months, taking in six national museums.

Beijing officials have already expressed an interest in future tours.

The gallery has now launched the collection which featured on China’s TV new channel CCTV. Footage can be viewed here htpp://english.cntv.cn/ program/culture express/20121116/106557.shtml