故宮研究出版專區

The Three Kingdoms Period is a chaotic era of warfare, and it is an important period in history. People have expressed their different perspectives on this era through different means such as poetry, paintings, novels, plays, films, dramatic performances, and even video games all tapped into the spirit of the times. These heroic deeds and wisdom happened in the third century A.D. in Asia have been praised by historians and artists of later generations over a thousand years. This paper is a case study which discussed the making of a special exhibition at the Southern Branch of the National Palace Museum in Chiayi County named as “NPM x Chen Uen / Timeless Legend: the Red Cliff and Historic Figures of the Three Kingdoms” (January 25, 2019 to April 14, 2019). This exhibition gathered precious collections of the National Palace Museum and the original illustrations for the video game “Chen Une’s Three Kingdoms” by Taiwanese cartoonist Chen Une to present this heroic era. The biggest curatorial challenge for presenting this exhibition was the numerous differences by all means between the collections on display. We have from bronze mirrors and crossbow parts from Han dynasty in second century, Song Dynasty Chinese paintings to the post millennium sketches, drawings and mixed media paintings by Chen Une. This paper discusses the curatorial debates and conflicts during assembling this exhibition in drafting the exhibition scenario to the controversial visual representation between on display objects as well as their different aesthetics. How did different people over 1800 years use their creativities to present these timeless legends, and bring out their imagination onto papers, ink sticks, jade, or other materials? We continued to look back on this period and stories of the heroes who passed away nearly two thousand years ago. Such history and figures have crossed the ages, the regions, and becoming familiar role models to the public, where history is not only seen as a past event, and leaving its impact everywhere.