National Palace Museum Director Chou Kung-shin (周功鑫) yesterday said the museum was open to allowing the first half of a Yuan Dynasty painting join the other half for exhibition in Taiwan, but downplayed the possibility that the museum would send its half to China for exhibition unless China officially recognized the museum’s ownership.
Chou told the legislature’s Education and Culture Committee that the museum was in talks with the Zhejiang Provincial Museum over bringing the first half of Yuan Dynasty artist Huang Kung-wang’s (黃公望) landscape painting Dwelling in the Fuchun Mountains (富春山居圖) to Taiwan for an exhibition.
Chou said the National Palace Museum could put the first half of the painting and the second half, which has been in the palace’s collection, together for a special exhibition by 2012.
Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao (溫家寶) told reporters at the end of the National People’s Congress on Sunday that he hoped the two halves of the painting could be reunited — a remark generally interpreted by local media as a metaphor for his wish to see the unification of Taiwan and China.
Chou told the committee that Taiwanese-owned Chinese cultural relics would not be exhibited in China unless Beijing amended its laws to ensure that every item loaned from Taiwan would be returned to Taipei after the exhibition.
On a related subject, Chou said it would be “very difficult” for the museum to open a branch in southern Taiwan by 2012 as promised by President Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) in his presidential campaign.
Chou said that while construction of the branch had been delayed by Typhoon Morakot last year, the museum would do its best to have a partial opening by that date.
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