National Palace Museum

National Palace Museum, art museum located on Chihshan Road in the Shih-lin district of Taipei, Taiwan. One of the world’s finest museums, the National Palace Museum was officially founded in 1965, when various holdings previously under the Joint Administration of National Palace and Central Museums merged into a single institution. Most of the pieces in its 620,000 item collection originated as the art collection of the Qing dynasty emperors in Beijing, capital of mainland China, and remained private property until 1925, when the republican government turned it into the Palace Museum. This collection was dispersed for safety after Japanese aggression began in the 1930s, then briefly reassembled in Nanjing after World War II (1939-1945). Following the war in 1948, Nationalist forces took the collection with them into exile in Taiwan. Miraculously, all pieces survived undamaged, but the collection was held mostly in storage until 1968.

The Palace Museum has one of the world’s finest collections of Chinese art, having escaped the iconoclasm of the Cultural Revolution in mainland China. The span of its holdings begins in about 3000 bc and forms a comprehensive survey of every succeeding period. The collection comprises many unique masterpieces of Chinese painting; holdings of calligraphy, ceramic art (including 23 out of only 30 known Song dynasty Ju wares), bronzes, jade, lacquerware, textiles, books, and other treasures are also particularly fine. Only 15,000 items can be exhibited at any time, and the displays are rotated four times a year to show as many as possible. The museum building, outside central Taipei, has been built near caves to provide a refuge in case of mainland Chinese attack.