The National Museum of Taiwan Literature in Tainan on Saturday launched a new permanent exhibition that it said is the “largest literary exhibition in Taiwan.”
The show, titled “The Power of Literature: Writing Our Taiwan” (文學力 ─ 書寫LAN臺灣), features six major sections, the museum said.
Four of the sections focus on literary epochs, including sections on literature from before 1895, literature from the Japanese colonial period until 1945, literature from before 1980 and literature until 2000, it said.
Photo: Hung Jui-chin, Taipei Times
It also includes 42 cultural relics, as well as a dozen multimedia installations, the museum said.
The curators adopted a more “lively and youthful” approach to presenting the exhibition as they wanted to counter the stereotype of literature being a weighty subject, the museum said.
The exhibition incorporates a lot of literature-related content to make the experience interactive, it said.
For example, the curators have turned the web of interpersonal relationships of Taiwanese authors into a multimedia installation, in which they are symbolized by stars in front of a blue background that resembles the universe, the museum said, adding that the installation also includes introductions to each author depicted.
Another interactive installation suggests to individual visitors what types of fiction books they should write, it said.
The museum does not just simply display its collection of cultural relics related to literary history, museum director Su Shuo-bin (蘇碩斌) said.
The focus is on communicating with people, Su said, adding that the museum also invites visitors to collaborate.
When they interact with the exhibits, they are cocreating the literary works, he said.
Su said that he believes that visitors would not only understand the hardships authors faced in the past, but also how literature has diversified across multiple media.
The museum said it hopes to raise awareness of the nation’s literary history, and motivate people to read and write.
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