The National Palace Museum, home to one of the world’s biggest collections of imperial Chinese treasures, must expand its horizons internationally to let the “world see Taiwan,” President William Lai (賴清德) said on Friday as it marked its centenary.
The museum was re-established in Taipei in 1965 after the Republic of China government lost the Chinese Civil War against Mao Zedong’s (毛澤東) communists and fled to Taiwan in 1949, taking with it thousands of cases of antiques once owned by China’s emperors, saving them from destruction during and after the revolution.
Speaking to inaugurate an exhibition of French impressionist and early modernist paintings from New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art (Met), Lai said that the National Palace Museum was a “state asset.”
Photo: CNA
“The National Palace Museum not only needs to deepen its roots locally, it also needs to deepen them internationally. We need to go into the world, to let the world see Taiwan, but also to bring the world to Taiwan,” he said at the museum.
“The National Palace Museum is not only the National Palace Museum of Taiwan, but also the National Palace Museum of the world and I believe these values should be strongly supported by the international community,” he added.
A competing institution is in Beijing, the similarly named Palace Museum, although the National Palace Museum is not planning any joint anniversary events with China.
Quincy Houghton, the Met’s deputy director for exhibitions and international initiatives, speaking at the event with Lai, praised the close relations between the Taipei and New York museums, including in 1996 when the National Palace Museum sent some of its collection to the Met.
“We are honored to collaborate with the National Palace Museum on its very special centennial year,” she said.
Works by Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Vincent van Gogh and Paul Cezanne are on show at the National Palace Museum through Oct. 12.
The show is the Met’s first large-scale presentation in Taiwan and is the first stop on its Asia tour before heading to the National Museum of Korea in Seoul.
Organized into five themed sections — “The Body,” “Portraits and Personalities,” “In Nature,” “From the City to the Country” and “By the Water” — the exhibition explores how artists responded to a century of social change and artistic evolution.
Highlights include Two Young Girls at the Piano by Renoir, celebrated for its luminous brushwork, and a preparatory study by Seurat for A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte, the National Palace Museum said.
For ticket details, visit: www.mediasphere.com.tw.
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