National Palace Museum hits the road

DPA, VIENNA
Wednesday, Feb 27, 2008, Page 15

An ad for the National Palace Museum exhibition in Austria. PHOTO: CNA

In a rare venture abroad, Taipei’s National Palace Museum (NPM, 國立故宮博物院) is exhibiting 120 of its grandest masterpieces at Vienna’s Kunsthistorisches Museum from yesterday to May 13.
“It is a very great event in the history of our house,” museum director Wilfried Seipel said. “It is the culmination of our work to intensify contacts with Asia.”
His Taiwanese counterpart, NPM director Lin Mun-lee (林曼麗), said the exhibition was part of an exchange of high cultures in East and West. “The hard work of the past four years in organizing this exhibition paid off,” she added.
Despite all assurances by organizers to leave political aspects aside and focus on the priceless cultural heritage, the exhibition could not escape political realities.
Taiwan is hesitant to let the irreplaceable artworks, moved to Taiwan in 1948 and 1949 by Chiang Kai-shek’s (蔣介石) Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT), out of sight fearing confiscation attempts by China.
Japan, where Chinese art is generally held in high esteem, tried in vain for many years to persuade Taiwan to show some of its objects there, but was refused because of lack of legal guarantees.

The following is a history of foreign exhibits featuring works from the National Palace Museum collection: 1935 to 1936: For the first time, selections from the NPM collection traveled overseas as part of the International Exhibition of Chinese Art in London at the Royal Academy of Arts in England 1940: An invitation was extended to organize the Chinese Art Exhibition in Moscow and Leningrad in the Soviet Union 1961 to 1962: Selections were sent for the US exhibit Chinese Art Treasures at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Art Institute in Chicago and de Young Memorial Museum in San Francisco 1964: Artworks were selected for participation in the New York World’s Fair 1970: Artworks were selected for participation in the Osaka World Exposition, Japan 1973: Artworks took part in the China Exhibition in Seoul, Korea 1991 to 1992: Artworks were selected for the major US exhibit Circa 1492: Art in the Age of Exploration held at the National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC 1996 to 1997: The US exhibit Splendors of Imperial China: Treasures from the National Palace Museum, Taipei was held at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, Art Institute of Chicago, Museum of Asian Art in San Francisco, and National Gallery of Art in Washington, DC 1998 to 1999: Memoire d’Empire: Tresors du Musee National du Palais, Taipei (Memory of the Empire: Treasures of the National Palace Museum, Taipei) was held in Paris, France, at the Galeries Nationales du Grand Palais 2000 to 2001: Artworks were selected for loan to US exhibit Taoism and the Arts of China jointly organized by the Art Institute of Chicago and the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco 2003 to 2004: Treasures of the Sons of Heaven: The Imperial Collection from the National Palace Museum, Taipei was organized and held in Berlin (Altes Museum) and Bonn, Germany 2005 to 2006: Artworks were selected to participate in the exhibit Genghis Khan and His Heirs: The Great Mongolian Empire in Bonn (Kunst to und Ausstellungshalle der Bundesrepublik) and Munich (Museum of Anthropology), Germany 2006: Works were selected for the French exhibit Les Tres Riches Heures de la Cour de Chine (1662 to 1796): Chefs to d’Oeuvre de la Peinture Imperiale des Qing (The Very Rich Hours of the Court of China [1662 to 1796]: Masterpieces from Qing Imperial Painting) at the Musee Guimet, Paris Source: npm

Austria, like Germany, the US and France — the only other venues of exhibitions — gave the legal guarantees required for such an exhibition, Seipel stressed.
Yet the exhibition did not fail to create some diplomatic hiccups. In an attempt to unruffle feathers, Seipel stressed that the exhibition did not show Taiwan’s national culture, but Chinese history and asked for understanding on the part of Chinese authorities.
“It would be too strong to speak of intervention ... but there were issues that we were able to solve,” Seipel said.
The exhibition itself is confined to two rooms in the sprawling Vienna museum and may be too small to satisfy Chinese art enthusiasts, but the exceptional quality and wide scope of the exhibited objects gives a good introduction to the NPM’s collection of 650,000 pieces.
More than half of the objects in the exhibition have never been viewed outside Taiwan before. The exhibition shows several different aspects of Chinese culture — focusing on painting and calligraphy as well as jades, curator Renate Noda said.
Ceramics and bronzes are taking a back seat in the exhibition that has fewer, yet stunning, works of art.