National Palace Museum celebrates 80th with yearlong serious of events

This article was written by Rita Fang and published by the Taiwan Journal on December 9, 2005. It reports that the National Palace Museum in Taipei is celebrating its 80th birthday with a yearlong series of exhibitions and events that will run through to October 2006.

Perhaps the three biggest events organized by the National Palace Museum are exhibitions of rare books, Ju ware porcelain, and paintings and calligraphy that date back to the Sung Dynasty (960-1279). The three exhibitions will run from July to September 2006, with a five-day international academic symposium in August on Sung Dynasty art. This article provides detailed introduction on these three exhibitions.

Meanwhile, the National Palace Museum recently began raising funds by soliciting donations from corporations and marketing some of the famous images of the art in its collection for commercial use. A good example is Taiwan's BenQ Corp., which has agreed to sponsor the museum's various projects in exchange for the right to use the likeness of certain famous artifacts in the museum's collection. BenQ plans to help the museum build a "virtual guide" system so that visitors can learn more about the items on display without the need of consulting human guides.

IBM is also enhancing its KidSmart Early Learning Program with the National Palace Museum's digital education software for children. Since 2001, IBM has been making donations to early childhood education programs through its KidSmart project and by sponsoring instructors in science, math and computers in some of Taiwan's poorest and most remote areas. IBM's deal with the National Palace Museum is to introduce an element of Chinese culture in the company's program in the form of 3D animated short films.

Finally, the article features the National Palace Museum's "Old is New" project, which aims to brand the museum as a "lifestyle" aesthetic. The museum recently signed a contact with the Italian design factory Alessi, which allows the company to incorporate the likeness of the museum's artifacts into its tableware products. Other deals with other companies involve products such as toys, clocks, kitchen utensils and notebooks.