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Taiwan palace museum director faces calls to quit over broken Ming, Qing artefacts worth US$78 million
- Items were damaged between February 2021 and May this year but matter came to light only after a KMT lawmaker received a tip-off
- Museum director accused of cover-up denies issuing gag order, says all internal investigation and due procedures were followed
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Lawrence Chungin Taipei
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 (US$78 million) 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.
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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.
03:34
How Forbidden City treasures survived modern China’s bloody beginning
How Forbidden City treasures survived modern China’s bloody beginning
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.
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