If Taiwan wants to make more of their own aboriginal culture, they need to secure the return of many important artefacts from this era that are in other museums around the world.

From:
Taipei Times

Taiwan needs a national Aboriginal museum
By Lu Meifen 盧梅芬
Monday, May 17, 2010, Page 8

If Taiwan is a culturally diverse country, then how is that reflected in our museums? The National Palace Museum in Taipei remains the main portal for those who want to learn about Chinese culture in Taiwan. The only Taiwanese museum dedicated specifically to Aboriginal culture is the Cultural Park Bureau of the Cabinet’s Council of Indigenous Peoples. Its status is uncertain, it lacks research experts and its permanent exhibitions are not being updated. In other words, it falls far short of the standard we have a right to expect from a national museum of Aborigines.

Aside from the National Palace Museum, the highest-ranking national museums in Taiwan are the National Museum of History in Taipei, the National Museum of Natural Science in Taichung, the National Science and Technology Museum in Kaohsiung, the National Museum of Marine Biology and Aquarium in Pingtung and the National Museum of Prehistory in Taitung. The Museum of Prehistory is the highest-ranking museum in Taiwan dedicated to prehistoric research, Aborigines and the ­connection between prehistory, Aborigines and Austronesia. Although it is charged with promoting balanced cultural development in eastern Taiwan and in the nation’s remote regions, the Museum of Prehistory has the smallest staff, even though Aborigines make up a majority of residents in those areas.
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An exhibition of Chinese artefacts in Taiwan is opening as planned, but it is overshadowed by Taiwan’s unwillingness to reciprocate the loan for fear that artefacts will be seized by China because there is no law in place to give legal protection that they will not be. This is however, unlike some similar cases, as much a reflection of the nature of the tensions between China & Taiwan as it is on the relative risk of the exhibition taking place.

From:
Daily Telegraph

Taiwan and China at loggerheads over treasured artworks
The opening of a historic exhibition of Chinese cultural artefacts in Taiwan has been overshadowed by the refusal of Taiwanese authorities to allow its own collection to be displayed in China.
By Jonathan Liew
Published: 9:36AM BST 12 Oct 2009

The Palace Museum in Beijing has lent 37 pieces to the National Palace Museum in Taipei, Taiwan’s capital, for an exhibition of artefacts belonging to the 18th-century Chinese emperor Yongzheng, which opened this week.

However, the director of the Taipei museum said that it would not reciprocate, for fear that any works that it sent to China would be seized.
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