The National Palace Museum, Department of Antiquities, Taipei dedicated to popularizing the understanding of inherited treasures, is scheduled to host the three-day symposium titled, "The Conversion of Connoisseurship on the Imperial Antiquities" in October 18th-20th 2018. The symposium intends to encourage international exchanges and to deliver research accomplishments of recent years.
The collection of the National Palace Museum, Taipei, mainly consists of treasures inherited from the Qing court palaces in Peking, Jehol and Shenyang. The cultural relics have been passed down imperial line for over a thousand years since the Song dynasty. The consistency of this collection is second to none that has been ever recorded in the history of world’s civilization. The imperial collection of China has unique and irreplaceable importance in the history of Chinese art, politics and cultural studies. New cultural meanings have been continuously layered upon these heirlooms according to how each emperor responded to the imperial collection under certain scenario. During the early 20th Century, the imperial collection relocated to Taiwan due to political shifts, and so new cultural value was generated to gain recognitions from various audiences. Attention should be addressed on how above factors led to changes of art history studies, and how the connection between these cultural relics and its audience influences academic trends and cultural ambience.
From the other perspective, social unrest in the early 20th Century resulted in a great quantity of antiquity being sold to the West through art dealers. Western collectors who gradually gained knowledge of, and provided evaluations on Chinese antiquities also generated the above-mentioned impacts. The great efforts and investment Western art dealers, collectors and connoisseurs had put in indicates that Western connoisseurship and studies focusing on Chinese antiquities were growing vigorously. The conversion of cultural context stimulated by this series of events awaits further examination. The dynamic cultural meanings of imperial collection were moulded by critical assessments and studies from the East and the West throughout time. How to reconstruct this ever-evolving process under modern scholarship becomes a consequential subject.
The National Palace Museum, Taipei invites international scholars and experts to contribute academic research and to spark intellectual dialogues that focus on the imperial antiquities. This symposium is aimed to stimulate interdisciplinary perspectives in art history.