During a visit to the National Palace Museum (
After placing flowers at the CKS Memorial Hall (
While meeting with Palace Museum officials yesterday, Chen inspected the national treasures and then spent two hours enjoying a tour of the current antique exhibition.
Chen told the new director of the Palace Museum, Tu Cheng-sheng (
"These are world-class examples of preserved culture. But we should not gloat over our achievements in this respect," he said.
"We should bring the Palace Museum to the world and the world to the museum," (
"As part of this new era, we also have to see Taiwan's unique local culture as a part of Chinese and indeed global culture, he said.
During his visit, Chen dismissed previous claims by China that the national treasures in the museum are the property of China.
"The national treasures belong to the people of the Republic of China," Chen said, "and they should neither be moved to other institutions nor be used as bargaining chips in cross-strait negotiations," he said.
When asked whether the administrative status of the museum would be changed from Executive Yuan control to oversight by the Presidential Office, Chen provided no specific answer, but was willing to listen to a wide range of opinions.
"The National Palace Museum is certainly a world-class as well as national-level institute," Chen said. "If the museum maintains its direction, the question of which administrative level it should be promoted to is not important."
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