Source: All Taipei newspapers

June 24, 2014

 

The Taipei-based National Palace Museum (NPM; 國立故宮博物院) had long scheduled to hold an unprecedented exhibition of its collection of Chinese treasures in Japan. However, the Tokyo National Museum, the organizers of the NPM exhibition, violated the exhibition contract by omitting the key word “National” in “National Palace Museum” on the exhibiter’s promotional materials, including billboards and posters, causing a controversy. After the Tokyo National Museum corrected the wording of the publicity materials in the wee hours yesterday, the exhibition opened today, as scheduled. During yesterday’s opening ceremony of the NPM exhibition, Masami Zeniya (錢谷真美), executive director of the Tokyo National Museum, formally apologized for the museum’s negligence. In response, NPM curator Feng Ming-chu (馮明珠) accepted the apology in the hope that the Tokyo National Museum would conform to the letter of the contract, describing the cooperative relationship between the two museums as “the calm after a storm.” 

 

On the other hand, although First Lady Chow Mei-ching’s (周美青) had planned to travel to Japan to attend the opening ceremony of the exhibition, she canceled her trip because of the controversy. Feng said that she would do her utmost to reschedule Chow’s visit to Japan when the NPM exhibition moved to the Kyushu National Museum in September.       

 

The “Treasured Masterpieces of the National Palace Museum, Taipei” (神品至寶展) officially opened to the public this morning. Feng will lead a group of students from Fukushima, which was devastated by a tsunami caused by a powerful earthquake on March 11, 2011, to view the collection of Chinese treasures and present them with books on the national treasures. Feng and her delegation are scheduled to return to Taiwan tomorrow afternoon.