The National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts (NTMoFA) was inaugurated in 1988. Visual arts being its main theme, the museum focuses on the collection, research, exhibiting, and educational promotion of modern and contemporary art in Taiwan. The NTMoFA is dedicated to providing visitors with a diverse and professional space for appreciating art.
The museum takes up roughly 10 hectares of land, including an outdoor sculpture park. Its main building stretches east-west, with three floors above the ground and two under. There are different spaces for various exhibitions and educational events. In terms of exhibitions, there are 15 exhibition rooms, Gallery Street, U-108 Space: The Experimental Immersive Space of Techno Art, and Floating Isle: A VR Gallery. As mentioned, there is an outdoor park which displays various classic sculptures. The museum’s educational spaces include Taiwan Children's Art Cave, Children’s Book Area, and the Library, in addition to a range of leisure areas. The NTMoFA aspires to create art experiences and educational resources in many different forms for visitors.
Supporting Diverse Curations
The exhibition rooms spread across three floors in the museum building. By curating research-based thematic exhibitions and solo exhibitions of senior artists, the NTMoFA aims to construct the history of fine art in Taiwan. While shedding light on the development of Taiwanese art history and relevant perspectives, the museum demonstrates a wealth of modern and contemporary Taiwanese artworks. In addition, the NTMoFA holds international biennales, contemporary art exhibitions, and exchange exhibitions to show the globe’s art trends and diverse creations, in hopes of winning more presence in the world’s art and culture community for Taiwan.
In exploration and discussion of newfound technologies, the NTMoFA sets up trending experimental sites for innovative displays. Such include the U-108 Space which introduces 5G technologies to immersive visual/audio performances. Integrating the virtual and the real, this multifunctional space enables artists to develop their works digitally and demonstrate interdisciplinary art. Recently, the museum has even established the Floating Isle: A VR Gallery, as the first experiential space for regular VR displays in Taiwan.
Providing Multiple Approaches to Learning
The museum provides services to individuals, families, schools, and all kinds of institutions and groups. Other than exploring exhibitions, visitors are encouraged to learn about the museum’s displays and works of art, through a range of educational activities and learning resources. Such include lectures, forums, workshops, teachers’ conferences, guided tours, and audio guide service. Promotional events are also held from time to time at the museum’s front-gate plaza and outdoor park, for visitors to approach arts more easily during leisure times.
What’s more, Taiwan Children’s Art Cave, which includes Art+Play Space and Educational Exhibition Space, caters to the needs of children and their caregivers. Through new methods of children’s museology and aiming to build “education of the future,” it leads children to explore all categories and boundaries. We hope to make children’s participation deeper and wider, through a diversity of experimental plans. We look forward to seeing them explore things beyond current frameworks.
Mapping out the Context of Art in Taiwan
Taiwanese art being the foundation of our research, we are devoted to collecting, analyzing, studying, and publishing art-related references. Our academic publications include papers published at academic forums, Journal of National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts, and book series on Taiwanese art. Diverse content may also be found in Collections on the Development of Fine Art in Taiwan over the Last 40 Years, The Complete Essays on Taiwanese Art, A Comprehensive Collection of Taiwan Regional Art History, the Development of Taiwanese Art series, the Pioneers of Taiwanese Art series, and Historical Compilation of Artist Groups in Taiwan, which gather the viewpoints of professionals from all relevant sectors.
To emphasize the subjectivity of Taiwanese art and to build an interpretive mechanism for the development and Taiwanese art history, the museum curates thematic exhibitions on fine art in Taiwan. Other than introducing important collections, the NTMoFA invites scholars and experts in relevant fields to share their deep and diverse research perspectives. In addition, to construct an interface of exchange across national borders and art disciplines, as well as to broaden visions for the research of fine art, we hold academic discussions, forums and talks in conjunction with our key international exhibitions, thematic exhibitions, and biennials to create more room for dialogues with relevant institutions, art museums, academic communities, and artists around the world.
Preserving Taiwanese art
Based on the following three axes, “the context of Taiwanese art,” “the context of art mediums and genres,” and “the styles and schools of artists,” and after more than 30 years of collecting, the NTMoFA has acquired roughly 19,000 artworks at this point. These are not only important references for establishing the history and development of Taiwanese art, but also epitomize Taiwan’s social trends and economic and cultural developments in all periods.
We expect ourselves to protect the fine art heritage for Taiwan. We preserve our collections properly and regularly examine, document, conserve, and frame them. By collecting, cataloging, digitizing, and studying relevant documentation, we have set up a diverse database of images and texts. Using information technology, we have established an automatic collection management and service system, so that we can share art and cultural resources with the public.
We keep finding ways to use our collections creatively. Such include planning highlighted exhibitions and holding educational events, delving into the history of fine art in Taiwan and the collections, and promoting these artworks through catalogs, journals, and many other publications, as well as online data services. Through the application of modern technologies, we express the deepen values of our collections, and appreciate important Taiwanese artworks with multi-perspectives. Along with new experiential devices, such as AR/VR/MR and interactive projections, we hope to introduce the characteristics of Taiwanese art to the public, in ways that resonate with their daily lives.
Acquiring and sharing the knowledge of art
The NTMoFA has an Art Library that specializes in fine art and has been accumulating a wide range of art resources since its inauguration. It mainly collects relevant books and journals, in addition to maintaining an e-archive and multimedia data of the sort. It has also been actively calling for documentations on fine art in Taiwan lately, makes it on of the most important database for studying the history and development of Taiwanese art in Taiwan. The library provides the following: open-shelf books, online resources, art references, photocopying services, collection guides, multimedia screenings, documentation deliveries, with a knowledge-based services and enriching content to share with the public.
For the reading demand of children under aged 12, the NTMoFA sets up picture book area “Art Dream” with art as salient character and illustration books. Art Dream leads children to appreciate the artistic language by reading illustration books and storytelling, to cultivate children’s aesthetic feelings and reading habits as sowing seeds of culture and art.