When the Department of Anthropology opened the doors of the Museum of Anthropology to the general public in 2010, the museum had undergone an important transformation. Once a small specialized anthropological archive dedicated primarily to academic and research purposes and accessible only to researchers and scholars, the museum then became a full-scale university museum guided by a new mission to utilize its valuable and fascinating archives to educate the public and to promote public engagement and participation through such activities as cooperative projects with Taiwan's indigenous peoples and special exhibitions.

One of the museum's major efforts to engage and involve the present-day indigenous peoples of Taiwan has been the established by NTU's ethnological researchers of special artifact sharing relationships with indigenous groups. While the museum houses the artifacts shared under these partnerships for preservation and exhibition purposes, members of indigenous groups, when led by group elders, are granted special access that gives them the opportunity to observe the artifacts of their particular group up close while learning about the artifacts' history through their group's oral tradition.

Besides maintaining a number of permanent exhibits, the museum has held an ongoing series of special exhibitions during the five years since its opening. The latest exhibition, which closed on August 10 after a month and a half run, was curated completely by students of the Department of Anthropology.

Focusing on the culinary arts of the Neolithic Yuanshan culture that occupied the northern edge of the Taipei Basin as early as 3,200 years ago, the students took full responsibility for designing, arranging, and promoting the event, gaining practical experience in museum planning in the process.  Moreover, the student curators created a thought-provoking narrative that juxtaposed excavated Yuanshan cooking and eating utensils against our modern implements, serving up a stone ax head aside a knife and fork, and leftovers from a Yuanshan shell mound next to aluminum foil.