National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts Audio Guide

National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts: what does the audio guide cover?

1. 01

   Welcome to National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts

   Welcome to the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, known locally as 國立臺灣美術館, standing at Number 2, Section 1, Wuquan West Road, in Taichung's West District. This is the first national-level art museum in the Republic of China, and the only one of its kind in Taiwan. It is also the largest public art museum in the country, with a total floor area of 49,604 square meters. The museum sits on a site of roughly 10 hectares, and that figure includes the sculpture park outside. So think of this less as a single building and more as a small cultural district that you can wander through. Over the next few minutes we will follow its story from the opening day in 1988 to the dramatic closing ceremony 10 years later. We will walk through its halls and its famous bronze buffalo, and look at the gift of paintings that filled gaps in Taiwan's art history. Along the way you will meet some of the nearby heritage that is tied to the museum's future.

2. 02

   From Provincial Museum to National Institution

   The museum opened on 26 June 1988 under the former Taiwan Provincial Government's department of education. Its first name was simply the Museum of Art, and the provincial government created it as part of a policy to strengthen cultural development, drawing on public needs and the recommendations of people in the art world. In July 1989 the museum took over the running of the province-wide art exhibition, starting with its forty-fourth edition and continuing through the fifty-third. That gave the young museum an important role in Taiwan's art calendar almost from the start. Then came a change of identity. After the provincial government was streamlined in 1999, the museum moved under the Council for Cultural Affairs, which became the Ministry of Culture on 20 May 2012. It was renamed the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, the name you see today. Since 2000 it has also organized Taiwan's pavilion at the Venice Architecture Biennale, carrying Taiwanese ideas about space and cities to an international stage.

3. 03

   Inside the Building: Halls, Streets and a Bronze Herd

   The museum is a long building running east to west, with two floors below ground and three above. Its architecture breaks from the traditional scheme and joins the outer views and activities with the performance and exhibition spaces. A transparent corridor links the museum to the natural scenery outside, so the move between indoors and outdoors feels like a gentle transition. Inside, the spaces have inviting names: Buffalo Hall, Art Street and the Time Atrium, along with numbered exhibition rooms across several floors, a virtual reality gallery and a pavilion called the E Pavilion. There is also a data center, a lecture hall, a picture book area for children and the Taiwan Children's Art Base. In the grounds you will find a classical rose garden, and the Chun Shui Tang tea house and the museum shop are part of the complex too. In the first-floor lobby, look for the bronze buffalo group. It is a cast replica of Huang Tu-shui's Water Buffalo group. The original is listed as a national treasure and is kept at Zhongshan Hall in Taipei. Huang Tu-shui's work is also part of this museum's story: his national treasure Sweet Dew Water was brought here after finishing a touring exhibition and formally entered the collection.

4. 04

   Explosions, Earthquakes and a Gift of Paintings

   In August 1998 the museum closed for a major renovation, and it marked the moment with a closing ceremony built around an explosion event by the artist Cai Guo-Qiang, titled Nothing Destroyed, Nothing Built. A little over a year later, on 21 September 1999, the great earthquake damaged the main building and forced it to close again. More recent chapters are about growth. In September 2018 the Minister of Culture signed a letter of intent with the chairman of the Shun Tien Museum in California. The chairman said the gift would fulfill the wish of his father, Hsu Hung-yuan, who founded the Shuntien pharmaceutical company. It brought a collection of 652 paintings to the museum free of charge, and the whole collection arrived in August 2019. The collection includes works by major figures of modern Taiwanese painting, among them Li Mei-shu, Liao Chi-chun, Chen Cheng-po, Yang San-lang, Kuo Hsueh-hu, Lin Chih-chu, Yen Shui-long, Li Shih-chiao and Chen Chin. The museum was meant to show these works at the nearby Taichung Prefecture Hall, a separate national monument, but that plan was cancelled in February 2020, and the Ministry of Culture began looking for another venue dedicated to Taiwan's art history.

5. 05

   Before You Head Off

   The museum keeps reaching beyond its walls. In January 2019 some of the operations of the National Taiwan Museum were transferred to it, and a preparatory group for a national photography museum was set up here. That institution was given the name National Photography and Culture Center in October 2019. The museum has also taken Taiwan's art to Venice, and it has joined three other museums, the National Palace Museum, the Fuji Art Museum in Tokyo and the Chimei Museum, for a joint exhibition called A Tribute to Flowers. As you explore, notice how the building links indoors and outdoors, from the transparent corridor to the sculpture park and the rose garden. Then see whether you can spot the bronze buffalo group and imagine its original, a national treasure, resting in Taipei. The museum's own timeline is full of biennials, retrospectives and children's art programs, so every visit can open a different chapter. What is on display today is only one part of a story that is still being written.