National Museum of Taiwan Literature

The National Museum of Taiwan Literature (Chinese: 國立臺灣文學館; pinyin: Guólì Táiwān Wénxuéguǎn; Pe̍h-ōe-jī: Kok-ka Tâi-oân Bûn-ha̍k-koán) is a museum located in Tainan City, Taiwan. It opened in 2003. The museum researches, catalogs, preserves, and exhibits literary artifacts. As part of its multilingual, multi-ethnic focus, it holds a large collection of local works in Taiwanese, Japanese, Mandarin, and Classical Chinese.

It was planned as a national-level organization to fill in a long-perceived gap in how the Republic of China's institutions had handled the island's literature as a field of academic inquiry and popular discourse. The Council for Cultural Affairs under the Executive Yuan set up the initial planning office.

Tainan was chosen for its historical significance as a cultural center. The museum is housed in the former Tainan City Hall, itself a national historical monument.

During Japanese rule the building was a government building of the former Tainan Prefecture.

Famous quotes containing the words national, museum and/or literature:

    I, with other Americans, have perhaps unduly resented the stream of criticism of American life ... more particularly have I resented the sneers at Main Street. For I have known that in the cottages that lay behind the street rested the strength of our national character.
    Herbert Hoover (1874–1964)

    I never can pass by the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York without thinking of it not as a gallery of living portraits but as a cemetery of tax-deductible wealth.
    Lewis H. Lapham (b. 1935)

    What makes literature interesting is that it does not survive its translation. The characters in a novel are made out of the sentences. That’s what their substance is.
    Jonathan Miller (b. 1936)