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The spirit of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation is collaboration — and it’s landed at the Honolulu Academy of Arts, too.

An exhibition of more than 50 prized landscape paintings from China’s Palace Museum in Beijing opened this week, just in time for APEC, an international economic conference of 21 government leaders from around the Pacific Rim that begins next week.

For only the second time in history, the Beijing museum opened its vault to allow the masterpieces, some more than 700 years old, to travel to the United States. The only other time was when China allowed New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art to exhibit some of the artwork in 2010.

“It was a major coup on our part,” said Shawn Eichman, the Academy of Art’s curator for Asian Art.

Many of the paintings have never even been displayed in the Palace Museum, Eichman said, and once the exhibition is over, the artwork goes right back to the vault.

When news broke that President Barack Obama had chosen Honolulu as the host site for APEC 2011, Eichman immediately tried to think of a way to connect Hawaii with one of the member countries. China came to mind first.

Eichman saw that Hawaii already had a growing relationship with China that included regularly scheduled direct flights to Honolulu.

After more than a year of negotiations, the “Masters of Landscape Painting from the Forbidden City” exhibition opened to the public on Thursday.

In addition to working out security issues and costs for insuring the artwork, there was also the question of how to get the artifacts here.

“For an exhibition like this, the Palace Museum requires an advance inspection team,” Eichman said. Three of the museum’s representatives came to Honolulu in May to check out the Academy of Arts and go over exhibition details.

Eichman said Japan Airlines is helping with expenses. The airline is providing air shipping and transportation for couriers and paintings from the Palace Museum. Each of the paintings was individually rolled and packaged for the journey.

In preparation for the exhibition’s installation, Eichman said museum staff carefully inspect the paintings at every step.

“Every time the paintings are moved, there’s an entire examination process that goes along with it,” he said.

Why is this exhibition so significant? According to Eichman, an expert in Asian art, the collection includes masterpieces by four artists who are considered the Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo of China. The Four Masters — Huang Gongwang, Wu Zhen, Ni Zan and Wang Meng — “are the most influential artists in China,” he said.

“These works were created during a time of extraordinary political and social upheaval,” said Academy of Arts Director Stephan Jost.

The masters painted during the Yuan dynasty, when the Mongols invaded China and overthrew the imperial court. Jost said these artists often retreated and stopped taking support from the royal court, and began painting for themselves, which was a very political thing to do at the time.

Wu Zhen’s “Lofty Reclusion Within Mountain and Stream,” one of the exhibit pieces that will be displayed, is a very detailed curvy landscape done in ink, on what looks like sepia-colored silk. The mountainside is dotted with trees bending throughout its crevices. Eichman said the hanging scroll shows an area in Suzhou in Southern China where the artist lived.

APEC attendees will get to see the exhibition during the week of the conference. Jost said the Academy of Arts is also hosting many events during APEC, and one at the end for the host committee — those who worked to bring APEC here.

The academy is also hosting at least one reception during APEC week. Details are scarce for security reasons, but Jost said the event would include mostly U.S. government officials.

“I don’t even know who’s on that guest list,” Jost said. “I’m pretty sure it’s not Obama, because I think we would know that.”

Putting together an exhibition of this magnitude required the teamwork of many organizations Eichman said. Even insuring the paintings was a collaborative effort of the U.S. and Chinese governments.

“I can’t tell you the insurance figures,” Jost said, “But your jaw would hit the ground if you saw them. It’s so valuable that the only people who can afford insuring these are federal governments.”

“Masters of Landscape Painting from the Forbidden City” is open to the public November 3, 2011 – January 8, 2012 at the Honolulu Academy of Arts.