Under planning and construction for 15 years, the Southern Branch of the NPM opened for scheduled visits on December 28, 2015. The opening, a milestone in the history of museums in the ROC, marked the successful completion of the most important work of cultural infrastructure to emerge in Taiwan for several years.
To prevent duplication with the original museum in Northern Taiwan, the Executive Yuan designated the Southern Branch as a museum of Asian art and culture when it gave the final go-ahead for the branch’s construction in 2004.
Uniquely pan-Asian
Fung Ming-chu explains, “The National Palace Museum in Taipei focuses on Chinese art. Rather than a duplication of the museum up north, the Southern Branch is Asia’s first museum with a designated focus on culture and art throughout Asia. The two museums have points in common, but also differences. They complement each other.”
In the spirit and content of its exhibits, the Southern Branch aims to capture the pulse of Asian cultural development.
Some people may ask: The National Palace Museum in Taipei highlights the collections of Chinese dynastic courts, but what will be the curatorial emphasis at the Southern Branch? “Asia has given rise to three great civilizations: China, India and Persia,” explains Fung. “Chinese civilization belongs to East Asia, but since ancient times China has had connections via land and sea to other areas of Asia and has been influenced by them. The Southern Branch of the NPM aims to take a broader perspective through its research, collections and borrowed works, displaying content that highlights conceptions of Asian art, including Chinese art.”
Echoing three great civilizations
Wide-ranging, diverse, international—these are adjectives that characterize the Southern Branch. They accurately describe the general direction the museum is taking by highlighting the three great Asian civilizations. These ideas are echoed in the architecture of the Southern Branch’s main building, which occupies 20 hectares and draws from three concepts in Chinese ink-wash painting: nongmo (solid application of thick dark ink), feibai (“flying white” or brushstrokes with unpainted white streaks) and xuanran (diffusion of ink or color, producing a hazy effect). These ideas are expressed in different areas of the museum—via one wing that emphasizes “solid form,” another that emphasizes “void form,” and a third area between the two that provides a passage through the museum and to the lake. “In this manner the design echoes the exchange among the three great civilizations of Asia,” explains Fung. “In architect Kris Yao’s conception, the three civilizations are represented by the dragon, the elephant and the horse.” Fung says that the museum insisted on adhering to green building methods in the Southern Branch’s construction, making it a candidate for Taiwanese diamond-level smart green building certification.
With the NPM split between northern and southern locations, Fung says she prefers to think of the Southern Branch as “one of the museum’s locations,” rather than as an “annex.” “From an organizational standpoint, there’s just one National Palace Museum. There is just one organizational structure, one set of systems and procedures, and one collection of artistic works and documents. From a personnel standpoint as well, the northern and southern museums function as a single institution.”
One home for national treasures
In response to concerns about dividing the museum’s collection, Fung offers the following explanation: The NPM collection includes more than 700,000 items. It’s not a question of putting them in different homes; it’s a matter of dividing the handling duties.
Responsibility for managing the museum’s collection is split among three departments: Antiquities; Rare Books and Historical Documents; and Painting and Calligraphy. Meanwhile, there is only one accounting office, which is under the Department of Registration and Conservation. Fung notes that there are nine storerooms under the Department of Antiquities, which are managed by four internal sections. Meanwhile there are four storerooms under the Department of Rare Books and Documents…. Each of the storerooms has clearly delineated areas of responsibility. Non-Chinese Asian works, whether newly purchased or donated in connection with the opening of the Southern Branch, are given to the Southern Branch to handle. But all of the collections belong to the National Palace Museum as the overarching institution.
“In the future the Southern Branch will build collections of its own. The Southern Branch has six storerooms. When objects from the northern location are exhibited down south, during the period of the exhibition they will be managed by the Southern Branch. When the exhibition ends, the works will be retuned to their original storeroom. We didn’t adopt a divided museum model, because that would only dilute the power of the original museum.” Fung cites the example of the Louvre in France. She notes that the Louvre, in addition to its original Paris location, also has a branch museum in Lens in northern France and will soon have another in Abu Dhabi. But the collection hasn’t been broken up. It’s just gotten more opportunities to be shown off.
An NPM team responsible for planning the physical infrastructure of the Southern Branch’s exhibition spaces began working on the site in 2012. Fung explains that the NPM had already made requests connected to the ten large opening exhibitions before Yao even began to design the building, including specifications for the exhibition halls, the requirement for a children’s center, a gift shop, a post office branch, and, most importantly, a security control center, and finally the equipment needed for the storerooms.
A legacy of experience
Staff from the northern museum taught Southern Branch staff about every aspect of packing and curating. After antiquities were shipped to the Southern Branch, the processes of unpacking and display were carried out by southern staff under the direction of northern staff. These steps have been helpful for passing along experience connected to preservation of the nation’s cultural heritage.
Fung, who has worked at the NPM for 37 years, was deeply moved by seeing how the Southern Branch site was transformed from empty fields into a world-class museum expected to draw more than 10,000 visitors per day. It was particularly impressive to observe how the main buildings were completed in less than three years after ground was broken on February 6, 2013. “In truth, I was quite anxious about it. Particularly before construction was completed there were many issues to deal with. It’s like how it takes time to settle in when you move into a new home. On the other hand, it was also very exciting. After working on the project for so long, we were finally able to see the fruits of our labor. I think I speak for all of my colleagues at the NPM in saying that we were all very excited and cared very much about the outcome.”
Promoting arts education
Fung believes that the core mission of the museum is education: “We will play up the educational spirit of the museum, promoting arts education and working with all the schools down south and with the Ministry of Education, so as to make it convenient for students in Yunlin, Nantou and Chiayi to enjoy exhibitions in the museum. We thus aim to realize a more equitable north–south balance in terms of cultural resources.”
As an auspicious gesture to mark a new beginning, Fung wrote on the highest beam in the Southern Branch’s museum building: “Eternal Stability, Constant Harmony.” Fung thus referenced the names of a gold chalice and a jade candlestick in the NPM collection that date to the Emperor Qianlong’s rule and were regularly used by Qing emperors in a New Year’s Day ceremony to express wishes for peace and prosperity in the coming year. Honoring a museum that has been in existence for 90 years, Fung’s words express the hope that the NPM will continue to flourish and grow and that the Southern Branch will allow the museum to have even deeper and farther-reaching cultural and educational impacts on the nation.
ROC president Ma Ying-jeou included construction of the Southern Branch of the National Palace Museum as one of the 12 “i-Taiwan” infrastructure projects. When work on the project recommenced in 2010, he personally toured the site, discussing the pace of progress with NPM director Fung Ming-chu. (courtesy of the Office of the President)
The Southern Branch has a focus on pan-Asian art, including the art of China. The photo shows a stupa railing with tree goddesses from the Mathura area of northern India featured in the exhibition “Imprints of Buddha: The Buddhist Art in the National Palace Museum Collection.”
On the Southern Branch’s festive opening day, the Ten Drum Art Percussion Group and a folk performance group from the National University of Tainan perform a lion dance to bring the museum good luck.
A right-spiraling conch dating from Qianlong’s reign in the Qing Dynasty was specially selected from the NPM collection for the Southern Branch because it has deep historical connections to Chiayi. (courtesy of the NPM)