A new art museum fused with a library is scheduled to open tomorrow in Taichung, the biggest city in inland Taiwan, in a building designed by the prize-winning Japanese architecture practice SANAA.<\/p>\n
Known as the Taichung Green Museumbrary, the pairing is an ensemble of airy white boxes of varying heights. It consists of eight interconnected structures: three for the Taichung Art Museum, four housing the Taichung Public Library, and one that will be used as offices. The sprawling 58,000 sq. m project is located in the city\u2019s 67-hectare Central Park, within a decommissioned military airport.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe are two institutions that are very much equal partners,\u201d says Yi-Hsin Lai, the inaugural director of the Taichung Art Museum. The new institution \u201caims to foster dialogue between art, knowledge and nature, creating a new kind of cross-disciplinary cultural experience\u201d.<\/p>\n
The library will hold 460,000 physical books, about 40,000 of them art-related; it will also offer access to around half a million digital books. The art books will be found on the fifth floor of the library, which is connected to the museum through a roof garden called the Culture Forest. \u201cThis integrated design reflects the museum and library\u2019s vision of learning as a shared, living practice,\u201d Lai says.<\/p>\n
The Museumbrary is the second major city museum opening this year in Taiwan\u2014evidence of enthusiasm beyond the capital, Taipei, for building new cultural infrastructure. The New Taipei City Art Museum, located in a municipality in northern Taiwan that surrounds the capital but is administratively separate from it, opened in April.<\/p>\n
Like the New Taipei City Art Museum, the Museumbrary is funded by its municipal government. \u201cIts construction and operations are part of the city\u2019s cultural infrastructure plan, emphasising accessibility and civic engagement,\u201d Lai says.<\/p>\n
The Museumbrary\u2019s opening will include the unveiling of site-specific commissions by the Brussels-based Taiwanese-American artist Michael Lin and the Berlin and Seoul-based Korean artist Haegue Yang. Lin, whose family has roots in Taichung, has created a massive painting installation referencing traditional Taiwanese textiles. Yang\u2019s installation,\u00a0Liquid Votive\u2014Tree Shade Triad,\u00a0fills the museum\u2019s 27-metre-high atrium and references Asian traditions of venerating ancient trees.<\/p>\n
Inaugural show<\/p>\n
The opening exhibition,\u00a0A Call of All Beings: See You Tomorrow, Same Time, Same Place,\u00a0combines Taiwanese masters with Modern and contemporary artists as well as international artists including Joseph Beuys, Joan Jonas and Myrlande Constant. The show is jointly curated by the museum\u2019s team, Ling-Chih Chow of Taiwan, the American curator Alaina Claire Feldman, and the Korea-based Romanian curator Anca Mihule\u0163-Kim. Around a quarter of the 32 participating artists and groups\u2014including Huo-Cheng Yeh, Melmel Chen, Hsia-Yu Chen and the art magazine\u00a0White Fungus\u2014are either from Taichung or based in the city.<\/p>\n
The show, Lai says, \u201cexplores Taichung\u2019s historical and ecological identity\u201d, reflecting how the institution \u201caims to become a cultural landmark, an international hub for cross-disciplinary exchange, and a driver of urban sustainability through art\u201d.<\/p>\n
The new museum\u2019s collection will focus on works that document and reflect the artistic development of central Taiwan, Lai says, with a particular focus on \u201cartworks across diverse media that embody the site\u2019s interdisciplinary spirit\u201d. Some international artists\u2019 works will also be incorporated to help bring local art into global dialogues.<\/p>\n
Long a cluster site for artists\u2019 studios, Taichung offers a cheaper and roomier alternative to Taipei, albeit with fewer opportunities for exposure. It is home to the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts (formerly called the Taiwan Museum of Art), which was one of the nation\u2019s first art museums when it opened in 1988. Since 2007, Taichung has hosted the Asian Art Biennale. A summertime fair organised by the Taiwan Art Gallery Association, Art Taichung, has been held in the city every year since 2013.<\/p>\n
\u201cTaichung has a strong foundation of senior artists as well as an active generation of emerging talents,\u201d Lai says. \u201cThe art scene has deep historical roots, dating back to the early 20th century when many artists studied abroad in Japan or France, developing distinct approaches to gouache and Western oil painting.\u201d<\/p>\n
The National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts and Tunghai University\u2019s fine arts department have brought more contemporary art to the city, Lai says. \u201cToday, the city\u2019s art scene reflects a balance between tradition and innovation, supported by its educational and cultural institutions.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A new art museum fused with a library is scheduled to open tomorrow in Taichung, the biggest city…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":314015,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[6510,6225,6485,6486,1120,96,10748,10345,12393,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-314014","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-architecture","9":"tag-arts","10":"tag-arts-and-design","11":"tag-artsanddesign","12":"tag-design","13":"tag-entertainment","14":"tag-museums","15":"tag-museums-heritage","16":"tag-taiwan","17":"tag-uk","18":"tag-united-kingdom","19":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314014","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=314014"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/314014\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/314015"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=314014"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=314014"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=314014"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}