The Taipei Women’s Rescue Foundation on Thursday launched a fundraising campaign to relocate the Ama Museum.
The museum, in Taipei’s Datong District (大同), opened in 2016, the foundation said in a statement on Friday.
However, due to high rental fees and personnel costs, the foundation said it would be closing the museum, which is dedicated to Taiwan’s “comfort women,” on Nov. 10.
Since the beginning of this year, the museum has generated revenue of NT$2,747,078 (US$94,795) against an expenditure of NT$5,578,971, resulting in a loss of nearly NT$3 million, foundation statistics showed.
Following the announcement in July of its planned closure, the museum has seen a significant increase in the number of visitors, the foundation said.
While the museum had 239 visitors in April, the number spiked to 2,073 in August, the foundation said, adding that there were 1,318 visitors last month.
The rise in visitors indicates that the public continues to care about issues relating to “comfort women” and is taking advantage of the final months before the museum’s closure to visit and say goodbye to the venue, the foundation said.
As the foundation searches for a new location to house the museum, it is raising funds to prepare for the move, it said, adding that it has created a crowdfunding page (zecz.ec/3j4KY8G) on the online platform ZecZec.
The foundation has set a target of NT$3 million to pay for related costs and, as of press time last night, it had raised NT$217,901, or about 7 percent of the target.
The crowdfunding page, which opened on Thursday evening, is scheduled to close on Nov. 10, the foundation said.
In the foundation’s statement, chief executive officer Tu Ying-chiu (杜瑛秋) said that while the government has suggested different locations to the foundation, none of them were suitable, as some would require large repair costs, while others did not have enough space to hold the museum’s collections or were in remote locations that would be difficult for visitors to reach.
The foundation has found a few smaller spaces that would reduce the rental cost by nearly a half, she said, adding that negotiations are under way.
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