National Palace Museum

 

The exhibition has as its theme the Forbidden City at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries.  It is made up of seven sections: "The Imperial Household," "The Last Emperor and Empress," "The Imperial Couple’s Tutors and Friends," "The Palaces and Gardens," "The Late Qing Reforms," "Chinese Society in the Late Qing and Early Republic," and "The Inauguration of the Palace Museum and the Odyssey of Its Treasures."  The assemblage of more than 400 photographic images on loan from the Palace Museum of Beijing and the renowned photographer Mr. Zhuang Ling, supplemented by archival materials held by the National Palace Museum, will take the audiences on a journey back in time, and put them face-to-face with members of the Qing imperial family and their living quarters, the grand and imposing palatial architecture, people from different walks of life in a society in transition, the implementation of a series of reforms in the last decade of the Qing dynasty, and the transformation of what had been an imperial art collection into a public museum, as well as the evacuation southward of its most important holdings in the wake of Japanese invasion, and their eventual arrival in Taiwan.

 

A retrospect of the past century reveals the evanescent nature of worldly affairs.  With the historical images on view in the exhibition, the era long gone is now brought back to life again.  The encounter with those remotely familiar faces and stories will leave the audiences with a distinct sense of déjà vu.  While time has put away the past, its track is so vividly preserved and imprinted by historical photographs that the audiences are likely to utter an exclamation of how the world has changed.