Lawmakers are raising concerns that the National Palace Museum has no plan for dealing with imitation art works. The concerns were brought up in the legislature’s Education and Culture Committee on Thursday.
A ruling party legislator spoke about how a Chinese web site called Taobao.com was featuring high-quality fakes, including a life-size glass imitation of the museum’s most famous piece, the jadeite cabbage.
National Palace Museum Director Fung Ming-Chu was on hand to answer questions. She said that the museum has limited funding and manpower to deal with the situation. But as soon as imitations are discovered, she said, the museum goes through a cross-strait negotiation mechanism for dealing with piracy.
"It’s impossible for us to guarantee that it won’t happen again," Fung said. "But with this reminder from legislators today, we will continue to deal with [the issue] in accordance with the cross-strait regulations."
Meanwhile, a museum official in charge of marketing said that the museum regularly checks web sites to see if fakes are being sold. He said that if imitations are discovered, the museum requests that they be taken down. If the site fails to do so, they request action from Chinese authorities, and consider filing a lawsuit.