Theme Sites

With multimedia interactive technology, this section brings treasures from the NPM collection to you using websites offering thematic introductions. These thematic websites all provide a full array of visual and textual materials on artworks as well as various functions for appreciating them. This is done so in the hope of creating a multiple learning environment that will yield greater study and research benefits as well as reach the goal of digitized educational and promotional efforts.

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Fragrance Fills the Courtyard: Chinese Flower Paintings Through the Ages

Paintings on the subject of flowers in the collection of the National Palace Museum include many excellent examples down through the dynasties. The selection presented in this special exhibition has been divided into four sections: "Beautiful Scenes All Year Round," "Formal Expressions of the Mind," "Their Many Features in Painting," and "Auspicious Signs and Lucky Omens." Flowers blooming throughout the year have been chosen to express their relation to the seasons and certain festivals in China. These artworks also demonstrate how artists used their skill of compositional arrangement and such basic techniques as ink outlines filled with colors, "boneless" washes, fine ink lines, and freehand "sketching ideas" to transform apparently simple subjects into a wide variety of forms and manners in keeping with the times. The interpretation of auspicious metaphors in paintings also reveals how artists portrayed blossoms from yet another point of view, allowing viewers to further appreciate the unique beauty and diversity of flower painting.(2011)

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Dynastic Renaissance: Art and Culture of the Southern Song

The Southern Song portion of the Song dynasty, lasting for 153 years (from 1127 to 1279), was a crucial period in the history of China's cultural development. The Southern Song court not only promoted itself as inheriting the line of orthodox rule by reinvigorating traditional rules of rites and music, it also helped breathe life into literary trends of the Jiangnan area in the south, attaching great importance to education in Confucian studies, converging Buddhist and Daoist thought, and firmly establishing Zhu Xi as representing the Confucian orthodoxy in the study of the Classics. Furthermore, the court successfully encouraged various forms of economic development, to such an extent that agriculture expanded, commerce thrived, handicrafts blossomed, and foreign trade flourished at this time. Economic prosperity helped drive the winds of change in art and culture as well. All forms of literary expression reveal in one way or another fulfillment of the Way as well as the scholarly pursuit of ease and naturalness. Cultivated scholars were fond of connoisseurship and collecting objects of culture and refinement, paying particular attention to expressions of taste in life. In terms of painting and calligraphy as well as arts and crafts, guidance from the imperial family, new geographic and climatic conditions of the area, and changes in humanistic trends all helped to yield unique and highly artistic qualities in both content and form that had a profound influence on developments in later art.(2010)

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Harmony and Integrity: The Yongzheng Emperor and His Times

"Harmony and Integrity: The Yongzheng Emperor and His Times" features mostly works from the rich collection of the National Palace Museum along with 37 fine objects loaned from the Palace Museum in Beijing and others. Taken together, this display portrays the life and times of the Yongzheng Emperor along with the achievements in art and culture in his reign. This exhibit also includes a multimedia display on the origins of some stories about Yongzheng still widely circulating, providing an opportunity to clarify misunderstandings of the general public. The exhibit is divided into two sections, "The Life and Times of the Yongzheng Emperor" and "Art and Culture in the Yongzheng Era," featuring a rich variety of cultural objects from the Qing court in eleven categories that fully explain the person behind them--the Yongzheng Emperor.(2009)

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Tracing the Che School in Chinese Painting

Search lost names and trace true identities in the tides of change! The signature on a painting is how we identify an artist. These names may be true or false, or even missing altogether, hiding secrets awaiting to be unraveled! There are more than seventy paintings here from the Sung, Yüan, and Ming dynasties in China, and even works from Korea and Japan. They will take you on a journey tracing how the Che School went from a local style of painting to become the mainstream, and was even exported, before it finally succumbed to the forces of history, only to be uncovered later and its evolution rediscovered. With a diverse and stylistically creative layout, practical image search, interactive timeline, and high-resolution appreciation of the original works, you can go on an in-depth journey of exploration in art.(2007)

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The Calligraphic World of Mi Fu's Art

This thematic website introduces the art and life of Mi Fu, a scholar-official and master of painting and calligraphy from the Northern Sung period. Dealing mostly with his calligraphy, the contents of this website are divided into two main approaches: a gallery of selected works mostly from the National Palace Museum collection as well as themes based on times and places in Mi Fu's life. The six major themes include "The Itinerant Official", "Poetry and Prose", "The Mi Boat", "Pure Enjoyments", "Ideas on Calligraphy", and "Practice of Calligraphy". Combined with a chronology and map to locate the production of the works, this clearly shows the course of Mi Fu's career as an official, the development of his theories and practices in calligraphy as well as poetry and painting, and the history of his collecting of artworks. The gallery section of the website features a zoom function for all of the selections, allowing viewers to appreciate both the overall works as well as the smallest of details. There is also an interactive comparison tool for gathering together the same character appearing in different works of Mi Fu's calligraphy here, allowing viewers to gain a completely new experience of his art. In addition, each work has context tags using the latest web2.0 tagging and defining animated glossary terms, creating an emotional link tying the works and the individual viewer.(2006)

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The Spirit of Jade – The Dialogue Between Man and the Gods at the Dawn of Civilization

Cut off by mountains and rivers as well as differences in the natural environment yielded the formation of several different groups of peoples in the area of China proper during the Neolithic period. The jades that they made and used for rituals and ceremonies dedicated to their deities and ancestors are different yet share similarities. Chinese ancestors believed that fine jade as a medium for the spirits could absorb the wisdom of the deities and thus serve as a medium for dialogue and exchange between the heavens and the earth.(2004)

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Ju ware ceramics from the Northern Sung period (960-1127) are exceptionally rare, with no more than 70 pieces surviving in the entire world. Of them, the National Palace Museum houses about 21 pieces, many of which are sole surviving examples. The website "The Legend of Ju Ware" focuses on these Ju ware ceramics in the collection of the Museum and also discusses objects related to the Museum collection as well as Ju wares in other collections. The multimedia and 360 degree forms of appreciation present the legendary story of Ju ware ceramics for all.(2004)

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Grand View – Painting and Calligraphy of the Northern Sung (960-1127)

The National Palace Museum houses one of the finest and largest collections of Chinese painting and calligraphy from the Northern Sung period. The website "Grand View – Painting and Calligraphy of the Northern Sung (960-1127)" takes advantage of digital technology and the boundless world of the Internet to offer a comprehensive experience in appreciating and learning about these treasures of Chinese art.(2004)

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"Age of the Great Khan" is a website developed from a special exhibition of the same name, dealing with art and culture of the Mongol Yüan dynasty in China and held at the National Palace Museum, Taipei, in October of 2001. Working from the idea of an online exhibition, it deals with masterpieces of painting and calligraphy from the Yüan dynasty. With extensive introductions using Internet technology, the site is divided into the four sections of "The Imperial Clan", "Recluse Scholars", "Polyethnic Scholars", and "Marco Polo". From easy to in-depth levels, there is something for everybody who wants to know more about the spirit of this important period in Chinese history and its representation in the arts of painting and calligraphy.(2002)

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The Fashionable vs. the Antiquarian

"The Fashionable vs. the Antiquarian" is a website that takes the example of jade styles during the reign of the Ch'ien-lung Emperor in the Ch'ing dynasty, attempting to use the methods of storytelling and gaming as two relaxing and interesting approaches to the subject. It provides an explanation of one of the most complicated yet also most enchanting and thought-provoking subjects in Chinese art history--the interactive relationship between "fashionable innovation" and "classical revival". Since the web pages are mostly constructed with animations and the text used is easy to read, even very young audiences can appreciate and learn from this site!(2002)

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