This paper is a study of the early history of the National Palace Museum in the context of changing attitudes toward artistic objects in the political and cultural milieu of the first-half of the 20th century. The collection of the NPM was originally an imperial collection which laid its foundation in the period of Qianlung Emperor (r. 1736-95). As Qianlung Emperor's personal property, the collection revealed, in the process of its shaping and practicing to fulfill needs of a great empire, a clear dynamism. These artistic objects were moved and kept in palaces with different symbolic functions and finally constructed a complex but distinctive order. However, the order collapsed at the end of the 19th century when the Qing imperial power gradually weakened and was no longer capable of providing guardian strength. The last imperial house used the collection as a convenient tool to solve its severe political and financial problems. It led to the dislocation of the objects from their original context. Besides imperial family, foreign militants, eunuchs from the court and other corrupted officials were also involved in this process of dispersion. Its result was the booming antique market, both nationally and internationally.
      The crisis of the dispersion of the Qing imperial collection provided the major momentum for the establishment of the NPM in 1925. Considered as part of the conspiracy of the restoration of the fallen Qing dynasty, the last emperor's manipulation of his artistic treasure was believed to be a threat to the fate of the young republican government. The status of these art works was thus escalated to the level of national treasure, symbol of the new nation. And, to protect this highly symbolic collection became one necessary action to complete the glorious national revolution for most new intellectuals of that time.
      Its image as national treasure was further enforced later in the period of the Second World War and the following civil war. The scale of its movement also expanded. The most important part of the collection was forced to travel to the inner land and finally settled in Taipei in 1965. In this dramatic process, its artistic value was though cherished, its embodiment of national identity played a much more crucial role in formulating policies of the NPM, even in the design of its architecture. Deeply influenced by this part of history, the development of the study of Chinese art history in Taiwan has been able to free from the conditioning of the Western notion of differentiating between "fine art" and "applied art".