DPP legislator Chen Chin-jun (陳景峻) yesterday said he suspects that some of the staff members of the National Taiwan Museum have helped to steal some of the museum pieces.
He said that a large number of Taiwanese cultural relics are missing from the museum's store rooms.
"According to my understanding, there are staff members within the museum who are collaborating with outside antique merchants," said Chen, during his inventory visit to the museum's storage area, located on Taipei City's Chingtien Street.
PHOTO: CHIANG YING-YING, TAIPEI TIMES
By Chen's request, James An (安奎), director of the National Taiwan Museum, and Wu Mi-cha (吳密察), vice chairman of the Council for Cultural Affairs, were also present at the site during Chen's inventory visit yesterday.
"It is unacceptable," Chen said as he spoke of the museum's dismal inventory monitoring practices.
"Based on the inventory list I have here, there are at least a thousand historical and cultural relics that are missing from the museum's store room -- some of these are being replaced," said Chen.
He added that relics such as weaponry, paintings and Aboriginal crafts comprised most of these pieces.
"For example, according to the inventory list, there is supposed to be one original Aboriginal costume from early in the last century. But now the original is missing and has been replaced with a modern reproduction," he said.
"It has been almost fifty years now [since the museum was taken over from the Japanese]," Chen said. "Yet, in all this time, the museum still hasn't finished listing items that are included in a collection of more than 25,000 relics contained in this storage room."
Chen based his estimate on historical figures that describe how the museum, Taiwan's oldest, was taken over from the Japanese in 1945 with approximately 50,000 cultural and historical relics.
"It is just simply ridiculous that all these cultural relics are locked inside the storage room instead of being out there in the museum for public display and appreciation," Chen said.
In response to the dissatisfaction that Chen expressed over the way the museum managed its collection, Wu said that the council would assign a task force within the next week to look into the matter.
Meanwhile, An said that it is his goal to completely finish the museum's inventory work within the next two years -- as well as to improve the condition of the storage room.
"Since the inventory work has not been finished, I cannot say for certain if museum members have done anything [illegal]," An said.
"However," he added, "if it is found that illegal dealings have taken place, the museum would definitely not hide it from the public."
China might accelerate its strategic actions toward Taiwan, the South China Sea and across the first island chain, after the US officially entered a military conflict with Iran, as Beijing would perceive Washington as incapable of fighting a two-front war, a military expert said yesterday. The US’ ongoing conflict with Iran is not merely an act of retaliation or a “delaying tactic,” but a strategic military campaign aimed at dismantling Tehran’s nuclear capabilities and reshaping the regional order in the Middle East, said National Defense University distinguished adjunct lecturer Holmes Liao (廖宏祥), former McDonnell Douglas Aerospace representative in Taiwan. If
ECHOVIRUS 11: The rate of enterovirus infections in northern Taiwan increased last week, with a four-year-old girl developing acute flaccid paralysis, the CDC said Two imported cases of chikungunya fever were reported last week, raising the total this year to 13 cases — the most for the same period in 18 years, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said yesterday. The two cases were a Taiwanese and a foreign national who both arrived from Indonesia, CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said. The 13 cases reported this year are the most for the same period since chikungunya was added to the list of notifiable communicable diseases in October 2007, she said, adding that all the cases this year were imported, including 11 from
Prosecutors in New Taipei City yesterday indicted 31 individuals affiliated with the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) for allegedly forging thousands of signatures in recall campaigns targeting three Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) lawmakers. The indictments stem from investigations launched earlier this year after DPP lawmakers Su Chiao-hui (蘇巧慧) and Lee Kuen-cheng (李坤城) filed criminal complaints accusing campaign organizers of submitting false signatures in recall petitions against them. According to the New Taipei District Prosecutors Office, a total of 2,566 forged recall proposal forms in the initial proposer petition were found during the probe. Among those
A 23-year-old Taichung man vowed to drink more water after his heavy consumption of sugary tea landed him in hospital with a kidney infection and sepsis. The man, surnamed Lin (林), used to drink two cups of half-sugar oolong tea while working at a food stall, where he often had to wait a long time before urinating. Lin developed kidney stones and noticed blood in his urine, but ignored the issue after taking medication for three days. A month later, he went to the emergency room after experiencing a recurring fever and was diagnosed with a kidney infection that led to sepsis, landing
RSS