Taiwan’s museum chief meets Beijing counterpart

Published on February 16, 2009 by brooks | This story has been viewed 944 views

BEIJING – The director of Taiwan’s world-renowned National Palace Museum met with her counterpart in Beijing on Sunday to discuss personnel exchanges, the first time the two museums have cooperated since the two sides split amid civil war.

The meeting comes 60 years after one of the greatest transfers of art in world history _ the removal of more than a half million artifacts from Beijing’s Forbidden City to Taiwan.

The meeting is another sign of improved relations between Beijing and Taipei, which began to thaw after Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou took office in May promising to promote reconciliation.

“We are very grateful that officials from the Beijing Palace Museum arranged our visit to the Forbidden City, and we have a chance to see the maintenance of the palaces,” the director of Taiwan’s National Palace Museum, Chou Kung-shin, told reporters.

She said the main purpose of her visit was to discuss “personnel exchange between the two sides.” They will also discuss cooperation in academic research, exhibits and publishing, Chou said.

China maintains that Taiwan is part of its territory, to be united by persuasion if possible, and by force if necessary. Beijing likewise believes there is only one palace museum, and that Taiwan’s National Palace collection belongs to it.

Chou is expected to discuss borrowing several portraits of the Qing Dynasty’s 18th century Yong Zheng Emperor from the Beijing museum for an October exhibition in Taipei.

But before she left Taiwan, she said in an interview with The Associated Press that much work remains to be done before any open-ended cooperation between her institution and China’s Palace Museum can begin.

A particular problem is the reported insistence of the Chinese side that the National Palace Museum’s name be changed to Taipei Palace Museum to avoid the contentious issue of Taiwan’s sovereignty.

Taiwan’s impressive collection was transported to the island in the waning stages of the Chinese civil war. The soon-to-be-defeated forces of Nationalist strongman Chiang Kai-shek moved some 600,000 items of Chinese calligraphy, porcelain, bronzes, landscape paintings, portraits and figurines from the Chinese imperial collection to Taiwan.

The massive art transfer created the world’s greatest museum of Chinese art in Taiwan at the expense of its counterpart on the mainland.

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