Treasures at the Palace

National Palace Museum: Taipei, Taiwan

July 7, 2008
(photo: Google Images, National Palace Museum)

Similar to the Smithsonian in D.C., or the Met in New York, the National Palace Museum is a must-see for visitors to Taipei. I enjoyed the exhibits, but did find it a bit small and sometimes underwhelming. It's not as if their permanent collection itself is lacking, but the museum's space for art is much too limited for their vast collection of paintings and such. For example, the National Palace Museum owns the famous Chinese painting which contains 100 horses (could not find photo online, does anyone know which one I'm talking about?) but rotates it, only exhibiting it every few months. Of course, the majority of museums own works far more numerous than the space they have to show them, but I believe that a main responsibility of a government funded museum is not only to provide the public access to classic works but to respect the art itself, by allowing it to be widely appreciated.

A few highlights (pictures courtesy of NPC wesbite):

White jade branch of elegant lychee, Agate finger citron

Amazing meat shaped stone. The artist used the natural different layers of hues in this stone to make it look exactly like a hunk of stewed pork.

The brilliant green and sparkling white of this cabbage carved out of jade are actually the jade's original coloring. Like with the meat shaped stone, the artist rendered this cabbage using the natural characteristics of the jade, complete with an exquisite katydid insect on the green part. Look closely and you'll see it!

On the steps by the entrance.

Painted fan. The NPM houses many large and beautiful Chinese landscape paintings as well as scrolls of Chinese calligraphy, which I always love, due to my appreciation of these two traditional art forms from my lessons growing up with my paternal grandmother as teacher.

No visit to a museum is complete without looting the postcard section of the gift shop. (Usually everything else is overpriced or a cheap imitation of the art that really can't be duplicated.) Here I am outside of it, where I bought 8 jadeite cabbage shaped and 2 meat shaped stone shaped postcards. They look good enough to eat.