Politics and the Museum

Ian Johnson has amazingly nuanced article in WSJ on the politics of the National Palace Museum expansion....

The palace museum is in the midst of an ambitious expansion. But critics say the palace museum has made the expansion into a statement of independence and non-Chinese identity. The new extension, in a relatively remote part of Taiwan, is being called an Asian art museum and will feature art from the Middle East to Japan, cementing the island's links with other Asian countries -- and specifically not with China. The move won't make more of its Chinese masterpieces available to public. (Currently, for space reasons the museum can show only a handful of its monumental landscape scrolls, many of which date to the 10th century and are its most famous holdings.)

The new museum is being used to push Taiwanese independence, says Taiwanese art critic and exhibit curator Victoria Lu. Using the museum to promote Taiwanese identity, she says, is purely "politics."

Lots of good quotes, and a well rounded point of view. Don't miss the entire piece....

[Taiwan]