Taipei City-based National Palace Museum held a press event May 7 in the city to bring the public up to speed on its planned centennial celebrations and progress on its renovation projects.
During the event, Director Hsiao Tsung-huang said that 2025 marks the 100th anniversary of the museum, as well as 60 years since its relocation to Taiwan and 10 years since its southern branch opened. Over the last century, the NPM has evolved into an international facility while preserving Taiwan’s historical memories, he said, adding that the upcoming celebrations will look back at the museum’s past and chart its path forward.
Among the celebratory initiatives is the publication of an NPM chronicle documenting the years 2000 to 2024. It highlights more than 100 major events and features over 1,500 photographs highlighting efforts to enhance the facility’s ability to make a greater social impact.
Equally impressive, the “Beauty Speaks for Itself” exhibition, which kicked off in September 2024 in the northern branch and closed last month at the southern branch, attracted more than 600,000 visits and underscored the NPM’s efforts to cultivate curatorial innovation.
The northern branch will soon host the “From Impressionism to Early Modernism” exhibition with French masterpieces from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, the NPM said, expecting the event to attract 400,000 visits during its run.
As for renovation progress, the NPM said the Second Exhibition Hall, converted from an administrative building at the northern branch, will be inaugurated next month for the Met exhibition, adding that a number of improvement projects at the southern branch will also be completed in the first half of the year to improve visitor experiences.
Other major initiatives include several exhibitions of precious artwork from its own collections and on loan from Japan’s Tokyo National Museum and Kyushu National Museum and the Museum of the Asian Arts of Paris, as well as an exhibition of NPM treasures at the National Museum in Prague in September and another at the Jacques Chirac Museum of Branly Quay in France in November. (SFC-E)
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