The director of Taipei’s National Palace Museum is facing calls to step down after the institution admitted to breaking three precious Ming and Qing dynasty artefacts, worth a reported NT$2.5 billion in all.
The incidents exposed the shortcomings of the museum in managing and preserving cultural artefacts, observers said.
They also raised doubts over whether the government of the independence-leaning Democratic Progressive Party gave due priority to preserving the 700,000 Chinese cultural treasures housed in the museum.
The valuable pieces, mostly from the original Palace Museum in Beijing’s Forbidden City, were shipped to Taiwan by then Kuomintang leader Chiang Kai-shek as he fled mainland China in 1949, after losing a civil war to the Communist forces.
The museum admitted to the previously undisclosed breakages last Friday, after an opposition KMT legislator said he had received a tip-off about them and alleged that museum director Wu Mi-cha had tried to keep the issue under wraps for more than a year.
KMT lawmaker Charles I-hsin Chen alleged that Wu had ordered museum staff not to speak to anyone about the damage, and asked that no records of the mishandling of the artefacts be made until they were fully restored. He also asked for all related paperwork to be classified, Chen claimed.
He said the incidents had taken place 15 months ago and would not have come to light but for the tip-off he received.
Chen demanded Premier Su Tseng-chang set up a task force to investigate the matter and that Wu step down for alleged negligence and cover-up.
The museum later issued a statement, sternly rejecting the accusation and saying Wu had never tried to conceal the cases.
According to the museum, the items from the 15th and 17th centuries – a bowl, a teacup and a plate – were found to have been broken in three separate incidents between February 2021 and May this year.
The museum identified the pieces as a yellow and green dragon-patterned bowl from the Ming dynasty’s Hongzhi period (1487-1505), damaged in February last year; a yellow bowl featuring dragons and white lining from the Qing dynasty’s Kangxi period (1654-1722), broken in April this year; and a blue-and-white floral porcelain Qing plate from the Qianlong period (1711-99) that was damaged in May.
Only the case in May involved human error, the museum said, asserting there was no evidence of mishandling by museum workers in the first two incidents.
Wu also held a news conference later, denying that he had issued any gag order, and said all internal investigations and due fact-finding procedures were followed.
He said the bowl and the teacup were found broken in their packages, and the museum had not been able to determine who was responsible.
The Qing plate suffered the most serious damage, having shattered into seven pieces. Wu said a senior member of staff had placed it on a 1 metre high workstation, from which it accidentally fell on the carpeted floor. Disciplinary action had been taken, he said.
The Ming dynasty bowl (centre) and two Qing dynasty pieces in their original state. Photo: Handout
Wu said the broken artefacts had never been displayed and were therefore not insured. Asked exactly how much the three pieces cost, Wu said they were classified as “ordinary artefacts” and their total values should be far lower than the reported NT$2.5 billion.
Also, because they were just “ordinary artefacts”, and not “important artefacts” or “national treasures”, there had been no need to rush to announce the breakage before everything was confirmed and responsibilities assigned, he said.
Critics, however, cried foul, pointing out that the incidents took place months ago and slamming the museum for still carrying out internal investigations.
“There has never been any case at the museum like the dropping of an artefact on the floor causing it to shatter in its decades of existence. It’s been more than a year, and the broken pieces have yet to be restored. If you say this is not concealment, then what is it?” said Ma Wen-chun, another KMT legislator.
She said the palace museum was a major venue, not an ordinary art collections hall, and it should have very strict standard operating procedures for handling historical artefacts.
“This shows that there is a serious laxity in the management team. How can we trust their professionalism?” Ma said.
Tuan Hsin-yi, secretary general of the Taipei-based Chinese Language Education Promotion Association, also questioned the professionalism of the museum management, saying: “[Wu] is a historian rather than a museum expert.”
Lo Chih-chiang, a former Taipei City councillor, said Wu, who was appointed by the DPP government, seemed more concerned about the ruling party’s mindset that “cares only about Taiwan and Taiwanese, despite the fact that the museum’s collection represents the most precious cultural artefacts of mankind”.
Chen Jiau-hua, chairwoman of the pro-independence New Power Party, said the museum should improve its protocol on how historic artefacts were managed and preserved.
“The incidents exposed shortcomings in the procedures that the museum uses to report and deal with damaged artefacts,” she said.
The National Palace Museum in Taipei, which officially opened in 1965, houses one of the world’s largest collections of valuable Chinese artefacts, spanning 5,000 years of history.
The museum issued another statement on November 1, saying its records showed there had been damage so far to 359 pieces, which had already been restored. It did not indicate whether human error was to blame.
This article was first published in Asia One . All contents and images are copyright to their respective owners and sources.
