Pierre Rosenberg
Director of the Louvre
Like the National Palace Museum, the Louvre was also founded by royalty. How to preserve the regal tradition and at the same time add new innovations and modernize is a complex and exciting challenge. Besides overall design, climate control and lighting, as a museum committed to modernizing, we have a very active policy of acquisition. The royal family loved antiques from the classical era of Greece and Rome, but the museum didn't start collecting Egyptian antiques until the nineteenth century. You could say the Louvre itself is a continuous temporal process. Viewers can see not only the picture within the frame, but also the history of the frame itself.
Our principle for managing the Louvre is very simple: Provide public service to visitors. Our institution is a national museum, so we have this duty. For example, we encourage as many people as possible to come into contact with and admire our art collection. To the best of our ability, we preserve and enrich this collection in order to pass it down to the next generation. We are also active in education. We hope to entice our visitors to come back to the Louvre, to experience the finest examples of the humanities and history.
The Louvre's current exhibition in Taiwan was in fact instigated two years ago, when National Palace Museum director Chin Hsiao-yi visited France and proposed the idea to then director Laclotte. We didn't want to arrange the paintings in a big hodgepodge, so we presented them according to subject. Seeing that landscapes are an important genre in both Western and Chinese painting, and that everyone can easily appreciate them, we selected landscape paintings as the principal focus of our exhibition.
This is my first visit to the National Palace Museum. The quality and comprehensiveness of the museum's collected pieces, as well as the professionalism of the staff, have left a great impression upon me. The exhibition is laid out very well. The visitors can all receive suitable directions and explanations. We specially sent a team in advance to study the National Palace Museum's preparation in terms of security measures and to learn from their experience.
Dr. Robert G.W. Anderson
Director of the British Museum
A world-class museum should possess a comprehensive collection of works from a single culture or from the entire range of world cultures. These collections should serve to educate, inspire and provide basic evidence for scholarly research.
It is important in managing the British Museum to maintain the continuity of purpose of the institution as a museum. Our museum has always had the role of a storehouse of objects from cultures worldwide, to serve the public and scholarly visitors. It is a national museum whose collections we believe should be available to be visited without charge. We have therefore always maintained a policy of free admission to the museum. In the future, the most important issues are conservation and acquisition. Carefully preserving the collections of the past and insuring a well conceived scheme for adding to the collections will provide a cultural resource for the future.
I have visited the National Palace Museum on two occasions. It is one of the world's great storehouses of Chinese art. The paintings, bronzes and ceramics are particularly outstanding, and the museum's magnificent building in Chinese style set against the hillside is a fitting setting.
The displays are well-designed and informative both in the long-term exhibitions and the temporary thematic exhibitions. I have been most impressed by the unparalleled quality and breadth of the National Palace Museum's collections which make it a focus for all students and scholars of Chinese history, culture and art.
Wen Fong
Consultative Chairman of the Department of Asian Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art
The most important prerequisite for a great museum is its collection. The National Palace Museum's artifacts were passed down by the emperors throughout China's dynastic periods. It was later transformed into a public museum, and the collection was expanded through purchases and donations. It has already become the most important institution of oriental culture, and it is a bridge of communication between East and West.
In 1962, an exhibition from the National Palace Museum traveled by naval vessel to the USA and created quite a stir. In 1980 the Metropolitan Museum of Art also hosted an exhibition from the mainland of bronze-age artifacts, including terracotta figures.
Starting in March of next year, our museum is slated--along with the Art Institute of Chicago, the Smithsonian Institution in Washington D.C., and the M.H. De Young Museum in San Francisco--to host another exhibition from the National Palace Museum. Through close cooperation on both sides, we have selected 476 paintings and objects of art, and the exhibition will be titled "Splendors of Imperial Chinese Treasures from the National Palace Museum: Taipei."
The 21st century is fast approaching. The paradigm in which the West dominates the world is rapidly reaching its denouement. The future holds a competition among economic markets and cultures, and the West is eager to learn more about different cultures. This is the background for the National Palace Museum's upcoming American exhibition.
On the National Palace Museum's seventieth anniversary, the directors of several of the world's biggest museums have been invited to attend the festivities, and the museum is holding an exhibition on paintings from the Louvre. This is a powerful expression of the pursuit of cultural development which follows economic stability. Culture is not a cosmetic adornment, but a demand of the people.
In the late Qing dynasty, Western culture began to permeate the East. China went through a period of reform, demanding Western-style modernization. But other than Western food and clothing, Western culture and art have never in the past been displayed here on such a grand scale as the Louvre exhibition. This is certainly a cultural exchange between China and the West like we have never seen before.
[Picture Caption]
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Director of the Louvre (photo by Kuo Tung-tai)
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A world-class museum should possess a comprehensive collection of works from a single culture or from the entire range of world cultures. The photo shows an exhibit at the British Museum. (photo by Vincent Chang)
