History and Future Prospects
The National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts (NTMOFA) was founded in 1988. It was temporarily closed for rebuilding in 1999 due to widespread devastation caused by the September 21st earthquake that year, and reopened in July 2004 with a brand new look. The NTMOFA is dedicated to the education and promotion of visual arts. It places great emphasis on collecting works by Taiwanese artists and exploring unique characteristics of modern and contemporary Taiwanese arts. Its aims are: to organize the most diverse range of themed visual art exhibitions, to foster long-term art exchanges with overseas institutions, to actively participate in major international events, to promote art education, and to provide the public with a pleasing and multi-faceted environment for viewing art.
The outdoor courtyard of the Museum comprises a total area of 102,000 square meters (inclusive of the Public Outdoor Sculpture Park), making the NTMOFA the largest art museum in Asia. The NTMOFA main building has three floors and a basement, with a total land area of 37,953 square meters covering an exhibition space of 15,601 square meters. The exhibition area consists of Galleries A to F, the Art street, E-Transit and DigiArk. The first and second floors are devoted to themed exhibitions, the third floor holds a permanent exhibition of the Museum’s collection, and the outdoor courtyard is showcases exquisite sculptural works.
The newly-renovated museum building provides an open and friendly educational environment. The newly added Picture Book Area, the Family Room, the Media Art Center, the Media Art Platform, the Teachers’ Resource Center and other educational and recreational areas cover a total of 5,319 square meters. During the twenty years since its establishment, the NTMOFA has held close to 900 exhibitions and thousands of related events.
Presenting diversified and characteristic exhibitions
The exhibition area of the NTMOFA consists of six galleries (A – F) laid out in an east-west direction. Whereas some of them each measures nearly 6 meters in height, the Art Street running across the first floor of the museum building measures approximately 11 meters in height. The museum building has three floors. The large exhibition space on the third floor houses a permanent exhibition of the NTMOFA’s collection of works, It is designated for regularly scheduled exhibitions of works by both experienced and rising artists. The galleries on the first floor showcase cutting edge trends in contemporary art. To publicly acknowledge the contribution of artists and to demonstrate our strong commitment to the conservation of cultural property, the NTMOFA dedicates Gallery F to the display of donated works and items. The East Lobby entices public viewing with fascinating displays of digital arts or cross-disciplinary performances. The Art Street, which connects all the exhibition spaces on the first floor, features an amazing display of large-scale sculptures and installation art.
The NTMOFA’s dedicated research and curatorial teams work together to organize over 30 exhibitions a year in an effort to display the results of research and art practice from both within Taiwan and around the world. Professional guided tours are provided to help the viewing public gain knowledge relating to the artworks.
Providing educational resources and learning activities
The education programs of the NTMOFA cater to various audiences including schools (even from remote areas), families, amateur and professional artists, individual art lovers, art-appreciation societies and minority groups. Apart from viewing art exhibitions, visitors to the NTMOFA can enjoy access to extensive services and learning opportunities provided by the Museum, such as seminars and special lectures, conferences, film screenings, workshops, teacher study groups, training programs and teaching resources, guided tours and wireless digital audio tours.
The facilities and activities of the NTMOFA are designed to encourage lifelong learning through play, and to inspire in children, the love of learning and art. The Family Room is enormously popular with parents and children alike, especially youngsters under 12 years of age.
The Media Art Center regularly shows excellent documentaries from Taiwan and around the world. Filmmakers are invited on some Saturdays to communicate directly with the viewers. To achieve the ideal of “museum without walls”, the Museum also provides documentaries or video clips of oral history interviews for outdoor screenings during the weekends, allowing the public greater access to arts and cultural events outside the traditional museum boundaries.
Mapping trajectories of Taiwanese fine arts
The NTMOFA has primarily focused its research work on the fine arts of Taiwan. The Museum’s research team sets the agenda and direction for the permanent exhibitions. It is also responsible for publishing The Journal of National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, conference papers, as well as research-based book series including A Comprehensive Collection of Taiwan’s Regional Art History, Criticism on Taiwanese Fine Arts: the Complete Collection, The Essence of Taiwanese Fine Arts, The Great Masters of Taiwanese Art, and Forty Years of Taiwanese Fine Art, among others. Besides, the NTMOFA’s research team often collaborates with university art courses in developing research programs, organizing conferences, or publishing theses on themes relating to fine arts of Taiwan, with an emphasis on the inherent subjectivity of Taiwanese art. From 2007 onward, the NTMOFA has organized The River of Art Meanders: Tracing the Origin of Taiwan Art from 1736 to 1969 – an exhibition which showcases major works from the NTMOFA’s permanent collection. An all-encompassing artistic and educational institution, the NTMOFA serves multiple functions as an art collector, exhibition organizer and learning resource provider.
In light of the fact that the NTMOFA’s main areas of research have expanded to photography, multimedia arts and all forms of filmmaking, and that contemporary filmmaking in Taiwan is now intimately connected to international developments, the NTMOFA launched the Taiwan International Documentary Festival in 2006 in a bid to increase the visibility of Taiwanese documentary films in the international art world. The Media Art Center was opened in 2007 to meet the general public’s increasing interest in documentary films. It provides a forum for research and development in the field of documentaries, and organizes a series of events on exploring the aesthetics of Taiwanese documentary films to help extend the viewer’s understanding of Taiwanese documentaries.
Preserving Taiwans art heritage
The NTMOFA charts the trajectory of Taiwanese arts with its unique collection of artworks by Taiwanese artists from the 18th century to the present day. Its permanent collection includes artworks and historical documentation from Ming-Qing Dynasties, through the era of Japanese Colonial Era and the Modernist period, to the post-war period. To convincingly articulate the diversity of Taiwanese fine arts and its developments and transitions over time, the NTMOFA presents its collection of Taiwanese artworks based on two dimensions of development. Whereas the vertical axis charts the historical contexts of Taiwanese fine arts, the horizontal axis shows a genealogy of artists and their works. The presentation gives a clear picture of how artists and their works may relate to the social-historical contexts from which they have emerged and prospered. Digitalization of the museum collection and documentation has not only enabled the NTMOFA to manage and maintain its art collection with more efficiency, but also effectively enhanced understanding and dialogues among the art community worldwide, as it provides international art lovers with fast and easy access to the wealth of Taiwanese art and its diverse and unique characteristics.
Accumulating and disseminating knowledge of arts-related fields
Established in 1988, the NTMOFA Library is a specialist library containing books, academic journals, electronic database and multimedia learning resources of art-related subjects. It is Taiwan’s leading source of materials for the study of Taiwanese art and history.
The NTMOFA Library provides a wide range of facilities and services including reading rooms with open shelves for books, periodicals, and reference works, the new book and journal area, library inquiry help desk, reference inquiry, Internet access to library resources, photocopy services and multimedia resources. All materials must be used in the Library only.
The Picture Book Area is designed specifically for under twelve youngsters. It provides children with fun and motivating art-themed materials aimed to inspire within children positive associations to both art and reading.
Promoting Digital Arts
In March 2007, the NTMOFA integrated the Digital Creative Arts Project with the Taiwan Digital Art and Information Center to establish the DigiArk – a comprehensive networking and resource center which contains a rich digital audio-visual archive with information on digital artworks, media technologies, as well as professional practitioners and researchers in fields relating to digital arts. The DigiArk is designed to accommodate the Museum’s wide range of cross-interdisciplinary, cross-media interactive installations. It is an ideal space for integrating education and creativity, and provides an excellent laboratory that allows artists to move freely between virtual and material worlds.
Exhibiting multimedia installations
The E-Transit was launched on May 3rd 2008. Located on the second floor in the Museum Shop, the E-Transit is a white-walled room where works of contemporary arts and digital arts are exhibited. Opened to the wonderful effects of light and shade, the viewer can experience the innovation and excitement of new media art.
The NTMOFA is a national art museum dedicated to the research, education and promotion of Taiwanese art. In terms of research, the museum continues to concentrate on tracing the genealogy of Taiwanese arts. In terms of education, its aim is to enhance the artistic capacity of the nation. It should also be highlighted that the NTMOFA has always been a true ambassador of Taiwanese art, as it seeks to promote international cultural exchange by actively participating in international art exhibitions, and by collaborating with international arts-and-cultural organizations and individual experts in organizing arts events. By providing a diverse range of arts and educational activities, the NTMOFA introduces to the public the characteristics of Taiwanese arts and help the viewers appreciate the beauty of art. The ultimate aim of the Museum is to extend and deepen the public’s interest in arts.
