The National Palace Museum is ranked as one of the world's top four museums, along with the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, the Louvre Museum in Paris and the British Museum in London.
The National Palace Museum should not be confused with the Palace Museum , located inside the Forbidden City in Beijing, capital of the People's Republic of China. Both institutions share the same original roots, which was split in two as a result of the Chinese Civil War.
History
The National Palace Museum was first established as the Palace Museum in Beijing on October 10, 1925, shortly after the expulsion of Puyi, the last emperor of China, from the Forbidden City by warlord Feng Yü-hsiang. The articles in the museum consisted of the valuables of the former Imperial family and were moved from place to place in the 1930s and 1940s to prevent them from falling into the hands of the Imperial Japanese Army.
During the final years of the Chinese Civil War, the museum essential works collections were selected for removal, under the orders of general Chiang Kai-shek, from Beijing's Forbidden City to Taiwan. With the victory of the Communists, the National Palace Museum was split into two . The part in mainland China is centered on the Forbidden City.
During the 1960s and 1970s, the National Palace Museum was used by the Kuomintang to support its claim that the Republic of China was the sole legitimate government of all of China, in that it was the sole preserver of traditional Chinese culture amid the social change and Cultural Revolution in mainland China, and tended to emphasize Chinese nationalism. In recent years, the museum has focused more on local and minority cultures and has included some materials on loan from the People's Republic of China.
In , the institution in Taipei is distinguished from the one in Beijing by the additional "National" designation. In common usage in , the institution in Taipei is known as the "Taipei ", while that in Beijing is known as the "Beijing ".
The National Palace Museum has also been controversial in Taiwan with many supporters of Taiwan independence regarding it as an unwanted symbol of China-centeredness.
National Palace Museum Construction
The National Palace Museum building in Taipei was constructed on March 1964 and was completed in August of 1965. Due to the insufficient space to put on display over 655,707 artifacts, the museum underwent renovations in 1967, 1970, and 1996. The museum reopened on Christmas Day 2006, after a long ten years renovation. It was accelerated in 2002, during this renovation period about two-thirds of the museum section was closed. The displays are rotated once every three months, which means 60,000 pieces can be viewed in a year and it would take nearly 12 years to see them all.
Categories in the Collection
The National Palace Museum main artifacts categories are:
*Bronze
*Painting
*Jades
*Ceramics
*Calligraphy
*Rare Books
*Documents
*Curios
Notable items
The museum houses several treasured items that are the pride of their collection and famous worldwide. They include:
*The "Jadeite Cabbage" is a piece of jadeite carved into the shape of a head, and with a close look at the naked eye, a large and a small grasshopper will appear camouflaged in the leaves. The ruffled semi-translucent leaves attached is due to the masterful combination of various natural colour of the jade to recreate the colour variations of a real cabbage.
*The "Meat-shaped Stone", a piece of jasper, a form of agate, the strata of which are cleverly used to create a likeness of a piece of pork cooked in soy sauce. The dyed and textured surface makes the layers of skin, lean meat, and fat materialized incredibly lifelike.
*The "Palace version" of the . Even though this is only a copy , it is nevertheless regarded as an artistic masterpiece.
*The "Carved Olive-stone Boat", is a tiny boat carved from an olive stone. The incredibly fully equipped skilled piece is carved with a covered deck and moveable windows. The interior has chairs, dishes on a table and eight figures representing the characters of Su Shih's "Latter Ode on the Red Cliff." The bottom is carved in character the entire 300 plus text with the date and the artist's name.
*The "One Hundred Horses", is a painting done in 1728 by by implementing a mixture of western artistic skills and utilizing eastern materials to realize a sense of realism to this native theme.
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