Far and Away: Reporting from the Brink of Change

The investigative committee and its subcommittees decided to reconsider every object, not just those on the restricted list, and protesters threatened legal action against the Palace Museum. De Montebello’s backdoor approaches and “corridor diplomacy” did not seem to be working. Neither he nor the director of the American Institute in Taiwan, our de facto “ambassador” there, was ever able to reach the minister of education. To those in power in Taiwan, the strong wishes of the Metropolitan Museum were of little interest, and the Met, realizing that posturing would not protect the show, lapsed into relative silence. But Fong remained confident: “The government has to be seen to be responsive to the people. So pieces would be withdrawn. But if the whole show is canceled, the government will appear to be helpless in the hands of some hysterics. Such a display of weakness would run contrary to their interests.”

Still, the Met’s situation was getting scary. The packing was already a week behind schedule, and the exhibition cases the museum had commissioned couldn’t be built because no one knew what would go in them. The reserved cargo space on planes had been forfeited. Acer had withdrawn its $1.5 million sponsorship, and now the protesters were trying to halt the Taiwanese government’s financing. The standard greeting in Taipei art circles was “What news from Wen today?” But it had become clear that there was nothing that Wen Fong or anyone else in the United States could do.

Toward the end of January, reports of new Chinese threats to Taiwan pushed the art controversy off the front pages. On January 23, the committee announced a compromise that left all sides frustrated: twenty-three items, including several landmark pieces, were withdrawn, and nineteen other important works were restricted to forty days of display. Then the Met bravely decided to start packing without financial guarantees for one of the most expensive exhibitions in its history (although insurance and transportation costs were somewhat reduced by the exclusion of key priceless works). “We told the board of trustees we would be picking up the gap of $1.5 million left by the withdrawal of corporate sponsors,” said Rafferty. “We also said there was a possibility that the $3.1 million from Taiwan would not come through. It was a gamble—$4.6 million from our operating budget wouldn’t have closed down the museum, but it would have been devastating.” De Montebello asked wryly, “Whom should it make anxious to have the work here and the money not?” In the end, Taiwan’s Foreign Ministry came through.

So Splendors of Imperial China will open at the Met after all, but without thirty-six of its crowning splendors. Sadder even than the absence of Early Spring or Travelers amid Streams and Mountains is that the elegant narrative coherence and balance of the planned exhibit has been substantially undermined. It is still, however, in many ways the greatest exhibition of Chinese art ever staged in the West, and the work will be displayed and lighted a thousand times better than it has ever been at the Palace. It may also be the last show of its kind: given the frenzied protectionist sentiment during January’s fracas, much of this work is unlikely to leave Taiwan ever again.

The unrest in Taiwan was strange for two reasons. First, Taiwan is hardly anti-American. An enormous number of Taiwanese travel to, and study in, the United States. Much of the population speaks English, and the occasional bar fight about Fan Kuan notwithstanding, as an American you tend to feel at home in Taiwan more easily than in almost any other East Asian country. Seven of Taiwan’s seventeen cabinet members hold PhDs from American universities. Taiwan is the world’s third-largest purchaser of American armaments, our eighth most important trading partner. “The educated population here is as much American as anything else,” a young artist told me.