Taiwan Today

Public and private museums have been instrumental in raising the profile of Taiwan artists at home and abroad.

Tucked away in an unassuming village in central Taiwan’s Nantou County, Yu-Hsiu Museum of Art stands out with its striking architecture combining wood, glass and concrete. Opened in 2016, the privately owned Yu-Hsiu was established to fill a void among the country’s art institutions. “Rural areas are often left out of the cultural conversation. This location was chosen to expand arts education beyond the cities and inspire a new audience,” museum director Huang Hsiang (黃翔‬) said.

With a focus on contemporary realism, Yu-Hsiu displays works from Taiwan and across the world. “We invite local artists and give them a platform to build a fan base,” Huang said. “When we host an exhibition, the artists help out by teaching classes for primary and middle school students in the area.”

Promoting cultural education has long been a guiding mission for art museums in Taiwan following a wave of public museum construction starting with Taipei Fine Arts Museum (TFAM) in 1983. Although National Museum of History and National Palace Museum—which opened their doors in Taipei City in 1956 and 1965, respectively—boast large collections of artworks from China, neither is focused on the country’s artistic endeavors in the 20th and 21st centuries.

Central Base

Another of the leading institutions established in recent decades is National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts (NTMFA), opened in 1988 in the central city of Taichung. Overseen by the Ministry of Culture (MOC), it has become one of the central pillars in the development of a local artistic identity.

The country’s only national-level museum of fine art, NTMFA has over 16,000 works in its collection, the majority by Taiwan artists. This has helped make it one of the most influential institutions in domestic modern art history alongside TFAM.

Backed by increased funding from the MOC since 2016, NTMFA has presented Taiwan art to the public at an unprecedented rate in recent years. This includes an average of eight related exhibitions per year since 2017, according to museum director Lin Chi-ming (林志明).

At the same time, NTMFA has undertaken wide-ranging research to uncover the secrets of the country’s artistic past. One such example is a study categorizing more than 1,000 local art groups chronologically into four stages spanning from 1895 to 2018. The results of this mammoth undertaking were released last year in four volumes.

Another NTMFA project sheds light on Taiwan artists who made names for themselves through official exhibitions in Taipei during Japanese colonial rule (1895-1945), namely the Taiwan Fine Arts Exhibition from 1927 through 1936 and Taiwan Government-General Fine Arts Exhibition from 1938 through 1943. Sixteen books cataloging some 2,000 lost artworks from these events were published in March, with a 17th volume also released detailing 119 surviving pieces owned by individuals and institutions in Taiwan and abroad.

Northern Powerhouse

TFAM also plays an important role in promoting national art. “One of the museum’s primary goals is to educate visitors on key figures from the country’s art history that have faded from our collective memory,” TFAM director Lin Ping (林平‬) said. A recent example is a three-month exhibition in 2019 titled “Herstory of Abstraction in East Asia,” which showcased abstract artwork by Japanese, Korean and Taiwan women after World War II. Another is “An Opening Ending: Huang Hua-cheng [黃華成‬],” a retrospective looking at the avant-garde artist’s career. The six-month show opened in May and is so named because critics are still debating Huang’s impact on the country’s artistic landscape more than 20 years after his death.

To better catalog Taiwan’s art history, TFAM established a unit for archiving a huge range of related documentary material, such as artists’ diaries and letters as well as materials related to organizing and promoting past exhibitions. Officially founded in 2015, the TFAM Archive has helped greatly expand the museum’s holdings.

TFAM’s rich experience telling the country’s art story to visitors from around the world made it a natural choice for organizing the Taiwan Pavilion at the prestigious Venice Biennial, a task it has duly performed for over two decades. In 2019, the pavilion featured artist Shu Lea Cheang (鄭淑麗)—whose works spotlight queer and gender issues—at a time when Taiwan’s legalization of same-sex marriage, a first among Asian countries, attracted global attention. The choice of indigenous artist Sakuliu Pavavalung as Taiwan’s representative at the 2022 show in Venice is equally significant. “His works reflect indigenous peoples’ deep respect for the natural world. Such attitudes are more important than ever as we begin life post-pandemic,” said Lin.

Expanding Influence

Thanks to smart management and an enthusiastic public always eager to learn more about Taiwan’s cultural history, the country’s art museums have continued to go from strength to strength. A crucial part of this success is a steady increase in the size of their collections. “Recent years have seen many private collectors bequeathing their belongings to the government, which passes them on to national institutions,” NTMFA’s Lin said. In August last year, the museum received 652 paintings by Taiwan artists from the Sun Ten Museum, a private institution in California filled with works collected by Taiwan entrepreneur Hsu Hong-yen (許鴻源‬). Descendants of Lin Yu-shan (林玉山) and Hung Rui-lin (洪瑞麟) have also donated numerous works by the Japanese colonial era artists to the MOC.

New additions require new galleries, and NTMFA is set to launch its own Taipei branch later this year featuring more than 9,000 works mostly by Taiwan photographers. Not to be outdone, TFAM is looking to add new exhibition spaces focusing on interdisciplinary artwork.

Growth of existing institutions is backed by new public museums. These include facilities completed or under construction in major cities like New Taipei and Taoyuan in northern Taiwan, as well as Taichung and Tainan. Many of these constructions are architecturally impressive, such as Building 2 of Tainan Art Museum, which was co-designed by award-winning Japanese architect Shigeru Ban.

Up-and-comer Yu-Hsiu’s design has also earned critical recognition, scooping a 2016 Taiwan Architecture Award. Small but ambitious, the institution has received more than 150,000 visitors to date despite its remote location. “Museums of all sizes can raise local artists’ profiles,” director Huang said. “They’re essential for telling Taiwan’s story to the world.” 

Write to Oscar Chung at mhchung@mofa.gov.tw