Palace Museum to open gallery for foreign artifacts in Fujian

The Palace Museum in Beijing, or also known as the Forbidden City, in Beijing announced on Friday that its satellite gallery on Gulangyu Island (better known overseas in the west as Kulangsu) in Xiamen, Fujian province, is to will open on May 13.

Kulangsu Gallery of Foreign Artifacts from the Palace Museum Collections, which used a former hospital construction built in 1898, will become the first permanent gallery of the Palace Museum out of Beijing.

The opening exhibition will display 219 sets of various types of artifacts, with various types including antique clocks, scientific instruments, and paintings.

The Palace Museum now currently houses about 10，000 sets of foreign artifacts，many of which were taken brought by missionaries and diplomats to the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911) court. However, the museum had until now used a former hospital built in 1898 to house them as it lacked a space to particularly exhibit them.