Taipei Museums
September 2025
We visit two genres of museum on each trip: A history museum and an art museum. The history museum tells the story that a place tells about itself, for better or for worse. Consider the Lao National Museum in Vientiane which exalts the country’s communist revolution but makes no mention of the American meddling that made political upheaval inevitable.
Similarly, clues to Taiwan’s assessment of itself are found in its National Palace Museum. As I derided the PRC’s ongoing claim of sovereignty over the ROC in set #1, so too can I mock the National Palace Museum’s insistence that it owns the history of China.
In a physical way this insistence is based in fact, as the vast majority of artifacts contained therein originate from the mainland’s Beijing Palace Museum and were brought to Taiwan during the Kuomintang’s retreat to the island. However, the placards frame this less as a desperate flight from defeat and more as a heroic safeguarding of China’s cultural treasures. In this museum Taiwan simultaneously denies being part of China while also claiming to be the rightful custodian of Chinese civilization.
The museum therefore, in the inherently political act of displaying objects, inadvertently encapsulates the messiness and contradictions of cross-strait relations.
Political preamble now behind us, the contents of the museum are fascinating. Highlights include intricate stonework, beautiful calligraphy, ceramic evidence of contact with Arabia and Persia, and a jade cabbage.
The other inevitable inference drawn by a visit to the National Palace Museum is the government’s attitude towards aboriginal Taiwanese, the people who existed on the island before mass migrations from the mainland. Indigenous Taiwanese garner no mention anywhere in the National Museum.
And contrast the government-funded, opulent, polished National Palace Museum to the humble, slightly outdated (but still excellent and informative), privately-funded Shung Ye Aboriginal People’s Museum clad in mildewed concrete just across the street. Lest I be accused of having similar priorities in this photoset by including only a single exterior picture, note that photography within the Aboriginal museum is not allowed.
The other museum we visited in Taipei was the Fine Arts Museum which houses an excellent collection by Taiwanese artists. I struggle with taking compelling pictures in museums because pictures of objects are frequently too literal and documentary for my style, as seen in some of the Palace Museum photos. But somehow the vibes were right in the Fine Arts museum and I am pleased with the results.
These three museums mirror Taiwan’s ongoing search for identity through the lenses of imperial treasures, indigenous heritage, and contemporary art.
Recipes: Reggie’s Portra, Classic Cuban Negative
Taiwan Photosets:
Taipei Days
Taipei Museums
Taipei Nights
Jiufen/Shifen
Taichung
Sun Moon Lake
Food
Baseball
