Opened in 1983, the Taipei Fine Arts Museum is Taiwan's first modern art museum, and its founding marked the rise of Taiwan's art museum era. Located on Zhongshan North Road in Taipei, the Museum building is white, incorporating the form of traditional Chinese cross-shaped “dougong” brackets, stacked on top of one another in an overall hashmark (#) structure. These precise architectural forms artfully blend traditional elements with modern style. Over its 35 year history, the Museum has held numerous large and small exhibitions bearing witness to developments in Taiwan's art world. From the 1980s and 1990s to the previous two decades, the Museum has continually acquired master works produced domestically and abroad. Today the collection boasts more than 5,025 important pieces reflecting the history of Taiwanese art. Collected works span the period of Japanese rule to the present, as well as works particularly representative of contemporary art, acquired through competitions or exhibitions. In early 2017, the Museum reorganized our collection with a focus on important artists and their careers in the context of Taiwanese modern and contemporary art history. The policy also emphasizes contemporary issues from special themed exhibitions as guiding principles.

The Museum's more than 30 years of collecting have resulted in an abundance of assets, which we have presented with special thematic or experimental exhibitions, as well as catalogues and special publications based on the collection. Starting in 2003, the Museum began publishing its quinquennial Collection Catalogue to celebrate the collection's 20th, 25th, and 30th anniversaries, and in 2004 and 2009, published the compilations 100 Highlights from the Taipei Fine Arts Museum and Jewels of 25 Years Museum Collection based on exhibitions. On the occasion of the Museum's 35th anniversary, renovations to the air-conditioning system and facilities, changes to museum procedures, expansion of collection capabilities, design of new storage facilities, and the setting up of an archive for research materials accumulated over the years have all led the Museum to a special point of transition. At this unique moment, the Collection Department invited in-house researchers to select works for the publication Taipei Fine Arts Museum Collection Highlights. In addition to showcasing new classics, the catalogue focuses on promoting contemporary masterpieces collected over the past 10 years and includes a total of 175 works by 166 artists.

Although the selection of works is inevitably influenced by space restrictions, such that the omission of talented artists is unavoidable, Taipei Fine Arts Museum Collection Highlights still offers a peek at the collection's general appearance. It documents representative works of senior-generation artists, works in the ink medium that either carry forward tradition or present new variations, abstract works influenced by the modernist styles that flooded Taiwan in the post-war years, and representational works in the Native Realist, Photorealist and Surrealist styles. Also included are samples of the Museum’s rich selection of sculptures, photography, and video works, along with new-media and multimedia works created with the recent rise of new technology. Presenting the rich and diverse features of the Museum's collection to readers, the catalogue is organized into seven categories: Elegance of the Elders, Brush and Ink, Modern Modes, Spatial Forms, Figurative Metaphors, Narrative Imagery, and Media Mélange.

What makes a collection meaningful is not merely preserving cultural assets, but also allowing more people to experience significant artworks that are usually hidden in a storeroom. An important mission of the Museum is to enrich the lives of the people by helping them to understand and appreciate art.

Images of the works in this catalogue can trigger intuitive feelings and imagination, and the text accompanying the work, which is the result of many years of research, narrates artists' life stories and career trajectories. I hope this volume will inspire readers to love the Museum's collection, as well as pique their interest in art exploration.

004 Perface

008 Editorial Notes

009 Plates

    └Elegance of the Elders

    └Brush and Ink

    └Modern Modes

    └Spatial Forms

    └Figurative Metaphors

    └Narrative Imagery

    └Media Mélange

370 Index