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:

    We want, and must have, a national policy, as to slavery, which deals with it as being wrong.
    Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865)

    When I go into a museum and see the mummies wrapped in their linen bandages, I see that the lives of men began to need reform as long ago as when they walked the earth. I come out into the streets, and meet men who declare that the time is near at hand for the redemption of the race. But as men lived in Thebes, so do they live in Dunstable today.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    Philosophy, astronomy, and politics were marked at zero, I remember. Botany variable, geology profound as regards the mud stains from any region within fifty miles of town, chemistry eccentric, anatomy unsystematic, sensational literature and crime records unique, violin player, boxer, swordsman, lawyer, and self-poisoner by cocaine and tobacco.
    Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (1859–1930)