“Divided for 60 years by war and political turbulence, the imperial art collection of China is now the focus of negotiations that could lead to at least a few of the works being exhibited together again. The director of the National Palace Museum [in Taipei, Taiwan], the repository of the cream of the 1,000-year collection, plans to travel on Saturday to Beijing, the first official visit by a director of that museum to the mainland since the Nationalists lost China’s civil war to the Communists in 1949 and retreated to Taiwan.”