An exhibition featuring privately donated artifacts from the public and the personal stories associated with them opened at the National Taiwan Museum in Taipei yesterday.
The museum last year decided to hold an annual exhibition in May that highlights private donations, which account for about 20 percent of the 138,000 items in the museum's collection, museum director Chen Teng-chin (陳登欽) said at a press event.
Through the exhibition, the museum hopes to express its gratitude to donors while sharing the deeply personal stories attached to each object, Chen said.
Photo: CNA
Among the exhibits in the current show is a pearl necklace from the 1940s donated by a woman named Chen Hsiu (陳秀).
The necklace was originally part of her mother’s dowry, Chen Hsiu said.
Her mother had built up savings through her dressmaking skills during the Japanese colonial era, but died after contracting malaria following World War II, she said.
Although her father’s family struggled financially and pawned off many of their possessions, they kept the pearl necklace in memory of his late wife, Chen Hsiu said.
Also on display are antique folding screens and ceramics by calligrapher Fu Shen (傅申), donated by Hsieh Pi-lien (謝碧蓮), who has given more than 300 artifacts to the museum.
The donated ceramics stand out for their square forms and also feature different calligraphy styles, including seal, cursive and semi-cursive scripts, Hsieh said.
Minister of Culture Li Yuan (李遠) thanked the museum for enabling visitors to rediscover the past through the exhibits, and said he hoped that people would come to find memories and history woven through the objects on display.
The exhibition, titled "The Memory of Objects: Family Heirlooms, Donations, and Renewal," runs through May 24 at the museum’s main building.
AGING: While Japan has 22 submarines, Taiwan only operates four, two of which were commissioned by the US in 1945 and 1946, and transferred to Taiwan in 1973 Taiwan would need at least 12 submarines to reach modern fleet capabilities, CSBC Corp, Taiwan chairman Chen Cheng-hung (陳政宏) said in an interview broadcast on Friday, citing a US assessment. CSBC is testing the nation’s first indigenous defense submarine, the Hai Kun (海鯤, Narwhal), which is scheduled to be delivered to the navy next month or in July. The Hai Kun has completed torpedo-firing tests and is scheduled to undergo overnight sea trials, Chen said on an SET TV military affairs program. Taiwan would require at least 12 submarines to establish a modern submarine force after assessing the nation’s operational environment and defense
A white king snake that frightened passengers and caused a stir on a Taipei MRT train on Friday evening has been claimed by its owner, who would be fined, Taipei Rapid Transit Corp (TRTC) said yesterday. A person on Threads posted that he thought he was lucky to find an empty row of seats on Friday after boarding a train on the Bannan (Blue) Line, only to spot a white snake with black stripes after sitting down. Startled, he jumped up, he wrote, describing the encounter as “terrifying.” “Taipei’s rat control plan: Release snakes on the metro,” one person wrote in reply, referring
The coast guard today said that it had disrupted "illegal" operations by a Chinese research ship in waters close to the nation and driven it away, part of what Taipei sees a provocative pattern of China's stepped up maritime activities. The coast guard said that it on Thursday last week detected the Chinese ship Tongji (同濟號), which was commissioned only last year, 29 nautical miles (54km) southeast of the southern tip of Taiwan, although just outside restricted waters. The ship was observed lowering ropes into the water, suspected to be the deployment of scientific instruments for "illegal" survey operations, and the coast
Taiwan’s two cases of hantavirus so far this year are on par with previous years’ case numbers, and the government is coordinating rat extermination work, so there should not be any outbreaks, Centers for Disease Control (CDC) Director-General Philip Lo (羅一鈞) said today in an interview with the Liberty Times (the Taipei Times’ sister newspaper). An increase in rat sightings in Taipei and New Taipei City has raised concerns about the spread of hantavirus, as rats can carry the disease. In January, a man in his 70s who lived in Taipei’s Daan District (大安) tested positive posthumously for hantavirus, Taiwan’s
RSS