The National Palace Museum is home to treasured collections of artifacts. To a greater extent, it is a depository of collective memories spanning millenniums. In 2025, the Museum is celebrating a significant milestone: the centennial of a transformative journey from an imperial collection to a museum for all since its inception in 1925, the 75th anniversary since the artifacts were moved into the storehouses in Beigou, Taiwan, and the 60th anniversary for the inauguration of the National Palace Museum in Taiwan, the permanent home for the precious artifacts. The year 2025 also marks the 10th anniversary of the Southern Branch of the National Palace Museum. To commemorate these meaningful occasions, the Museum is presenting Enduring Legacy: A Centennial Celebration of the National Palace Museum. With the momentum nourished for a century, the exhibition is a retrospective of the path the Museum has treaded in Taiwan in the past six decades. It is also an outlook into the infinite possibilities the future holds.
Over the past 60 years, the National Palace Museum, now houses nearly 700,000 artifacts, has become one of the most influential museums around the globe. This exhibition brings to light the pivotal moments along the journey and the transitioning perception and portrayal of the collection. While boasting artistic and historical values, the collection is also a window into the engaging exchange between the Museum and the public; into the shifting representation and interpretation of artifacts; into how the Museum has responded to and reflected such transitions through diverse perspectives, aesthetic values and cultural visions amid a changing society and the context of history. 
Featuring six decades of growth and development at the Museum’s Northern Branch, the exhibition highlights the establishment and expansion of its collection system; international exchanges and exhibitions; progress in the research and interpretation of its collection; the development of the digital archive. Among the exhibits are multiple restricted display works from the Museum’s painting and calligraphy collection, as well as works designated by the Ministry of Culture as national treasures and significant antiquities. Among them, Travelers among Mountains and Streams by Fan Kuan, Early Spring by Guo Xi and Wind in Pines among a Myriad Valleys by Li Tang, renowned internationally as the trio of monumental landscape paintings from the Northern Song dynasty, are making their debut at the Southern Branch of the National Palace Museum, with a focus that explores how these masterpieces have been perceived and interpreted as time progresses.
 
Entwined Brilliance behind the Door
 
The National Palace Museum began a century-long journey the moment its doors opened, unveiling to the world the evolution and legacy, as well as the continuing growth of an imperial collection. Displayed in Kunning Gong (Palace of Earthly Tranquility) on day one, Guo Xi’s Early Spring became the focal point to which crowds rushed in order to catch a glimpse of the Northern Song depiction of majestic mountains. The way in which the collection has been interpreted also represents a cultural narrative nourished in Taiwan. An organized archive that establishes clear profiles through cataloging, taxonomy and dating is an essential beginning to understanding the artifacts. With time and the Museum’s efforts in archiving, publishing and video documentation, the world has come to be acquainted with this unique collection. Meanwhile, the Museum engages in dialogues with the public through exhibitions, and as time progresses, so does the interpretation approach. As perspectives towards research and history shift and diversify, the collection has been enriched with broadened meanings. The past 75 years in Taiwan had been a period that cemented, transformed and reinterpreted the value of the Museum’s collection, a period during which the National Palace Museum flourished and became internationally recognized as a prominent cultural institution. Among over 13,000 pieces in its painting and calligraphy collection, Travelers among Mountains and Streams by Fan Kuan, Early Spring by Guo Xi and Wind in Pines among a Myriad Valleys by Li Tang from the Northern Song dynasty are regarded as seminal masterpieces in art history. Ensuing studies and explorations inspired by several exhibitions have fostered deeper understanding and appreciation among viewers towards the three masterpieces.
 
Expedition into the Future
The logo, “100+,” has been chosen to celebrate the National Palace Museum’s 100th anniversary. The “+” symbolizes the Museum’s venturing into the future. As technology advances, digital archiving has evolved from analog photography to digital imaging, and leaped from 8K-resolution imaging to immersive technologies such as VR and generative AI, allowing viewers to connect with the artifacts at a profound level. With these advancements and the centennial blessing, the Museum will continue to flourish as it embraces the future and the next 100 years.