Planning and Tradition

In the Ching Dynasty, the Neiweipi Area was famous for its beautiful lake and natural scenery and, now in the 21 st century, the area, along with history and landscape, is becoming more famous with the completion of the NeiWeipi Cultural Park. It is a place that contains childhood or adolescence memories of many local citizens in Kaohsiung. It is the home of the largest pond in Kaohsiung which used to one of the most important reservoirs for agricultural irrigation in Kaohsiung as well. In earlier time, log ships can be seen traveling along the Love River to the peripheral parts of the area and therefore, there used to be many log pools and factories around. The Neiweipi Pond is more than 30 hectares in area, connected to the Love River as well as the Lotus Lake and the Tsai-gong Pond.(Note 1)

Occupying 41 hectares in area (including the 6 hectares reserved for the establishment of National Taiwanese Art Education Museum), the Neiweipi Cultural Park was completed in January 2003. It is a leisure park which integrates functions of arts, culture, creativity, ecological preservation and education. The park is managed by the Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts which plays an important in promoting art developments at home, introducing important foreign art trends, exhibiting works by artists from Taiwan or other countries and extending art education.

The park includes the Museum of Fine Arts, a manmade lake, a sculpture park, an ecological park, a service center, and a once-abandoned but now renovated factory -- the Jung Chang Ironworks. To enrich the park's artistic ambience and meet the needs of a broader public, plans have been made to change the park's service center into a "Children's Art Museum," change the Jung Chang Ironworks into an "Avant Garde Art Center," and add an "Art Workshop." These changes will transform the park into a place where avant-garde art is created and displayed. The park's various venues, attractive landscaping, and environmental themes will make it into one of the most popular multipurpose art and culture parks in the nation.

If we look at the 21 st century world, we see that museums and art museums are equipping themselves to better serve children as their primary user group. Modern museums aspire to give children richer and more diverse lives. And because museums provide learning exhibits and spaces geared to families and children, besides ordinary viewers, they attract a great number of families with children. As far as public museums in Taiwan are concerned, though, although museums of art, natural science, history, industry and technology, archeology and anthropology, and marine biology have different attributes, apart from the Taipei Children's Museum of Transportation, none have established dedicated children's museums.

Now that the most of the facilities at the Neiweipi Cultural Park has been completed, plans have been made to use the existing experience and resources of the Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts -- which has been operating within the park site for nearly a decade -- to turn the park's service center and its peripheral areas into a "Children's Museum of Art" and "Children's Art Garden" meeting the needs of children and family members in the southern Taiwan. It is expected that this plan will expand the educational role of the Neiweipi Cultural Park, while giving Kaohsiung-area families an even better place for art learning and leisure recreation.

Furthermore, since the spatial layout of the Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts mostly features classical exhibition spaces, the museum hopes to take advantage of the park to provide alternative display areas satisfying the more diverse exhibition needs of avant-garde art. Currently plans call for the Jung Chang Ironworks to be renovated as an "Avant Garde Art Center" preserving the structure's original industrial atmosphere. With the addition of an "Art Workshop," the Avant Garde Art Center will become a major contemporary art display, creation, and teaching center.

We hope these plans will increase the vitality and competitiveness of Neiweipi Cultural Park and the surrounding community and business district, and provide even better service to citizens and Kaohsiung residents in conjunction with local cultural and artistic resources. We envision a lively art leisure industry in southern Taiwan attracting visitors from throughout Taiwan, and raising Kaohsiung's visibility as a city and a tourist destination.

Background and Vision

The Kaohsiung City Government intends for the Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts (administered by the Kaohsiung Bureau of Cultural Affairs since January 2003) to be a multifunctional art museum holding international art activities and presenting regional art to the world. The museum seeks to showcase the history of the arts in Taiwan, collect important local works of art, establish "thematic display rooms," engage in the study and classification of regional art, and fulfill the functions of collection, exhibition, research, and education. It is hoped that the museum will achieve the goals of "localizing international art" and "globalizing local art."

We hope that the Museum of Fine Arts will give the city of Kaohsiung the atmosphere and image of a cultured, international metropolis. We also look forward to the museum organizing and putting to use materials concerning the history of the arts in Taiwan and Kaohsiung. The museum will gradually build up a fine collection within the bounds of its resources, and create an innovative ecological setting in the cultural park, thereby giving the public a superior living space.

The Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts will strive to make the most of the Neiweipi Cultural Park in the 21 st century. Simultaneously embracing local and international cultural perspectives, the city is developing five integrated, versatile art parks: (1) The Museum of Fine Arts, which will serve as a center for international interchange and the development of local art; (2) the service center, which will be transformed into the Children's Art Museum, (3) the Jung Chang Ironworks, which will contain an avant garde art experimental space and an art workshop, (4) a sculpture park allowing the personal experience of public art and fine art, and (5) an outdoors theater giving open-air performances in a natural setting. We look forward to the park becoming a multipurpose space combining the features of art, culture, creativity, ecology, and education.

Historical Milestones

Responding to citizens' keen expectations and the recommendations of the city council, in February 1985 former Kaohsiung Mayor Hsu Shui-teh instructed the Bureau of Education to plan and build the Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts. The Department of Public Works had originally provided approximately two hectares of hillside land on the eastern side of the Mt. Wanshou Zoo for the museum. But while the museum was intended to be a major hub of local artistic and cultural activities, the Mt. Wanshou site was small and isolated. In addition, the area was poorly served by public transportation, and it was felt that salt from the sea and dust from nearby cement plants would damage works of art. Consideration was therefore given to other sites at the recommendation of the Bureau of Education and local art figures.

After Mayor Hsu was promoted to mayor of Taipei in May 1985, incoming Mayor Su Nan-cheng instructed the responsible authorities to quickly find an appropriate piece of land, and ultimately announced that the Museum of Fine Arts would be established on a 27-hectare site.

It was decided in 1986 that the museum and a cultural park would be established on a site at Neiweipi belonging to Taiwan Province, and the size of the project was expanded to 41 hectares. The New Construction Office of the Kaohsiung Department of Public Works sent out requests for drawings in July 1986, and architects Chen Po-sen and Lu You-yi were awarded design, planning, and construction oversight contracts. The construction plan was finalized in October 1989 (Notes 1, 2, 3, 4).

Hsieh Yi-yung, director of the social education center, was appointed concurrent executive of the Museum of Fine Arts Planning Office on April 27, 1988. The planning office was established on May 1 of that year, and Hsieh formally assumed the position of executive on October 18, 1989. A groundbreaking ceremony for the museum took place on March 25, 1990, and construction work formally began on May 10 of the same year.

Wu Tun-yi took over as mayor of Kaohsiung in June 1990, and the Ministry of Education agreed in January 1991 that the National Taiwan Art Education Institute would be moved to the site. The park was temporarily designated the Neiweipi Cultural Park (Note 3).

Mr. Huang Tsai-lang, formerly director of the Fine Arts Section of the Council for Cultural Affairs, was appointed second executive of the museum planning office on January 30, 1992. In this role Huang oversaw the construction and opening of the museum. Completed in January 1994, the main museum building consisted of four aboveground floors and two underground floors, and offered total floor space of 9,982 m 2 . The peripheral cultural park occupied eight hectares at the end of the first phase of development. The museum formally opened its doors on June 12, 1994, and Director Huang Tsai-lang was made the museum's first director on October 27 of the same year. Huang held this post until he was promoted to deputy director of the Taipei Cultural Affairs Bureau in October 1999. During his tenure he held many domestic and international exhibitions, art workshops, and the Kaohsiung International Sculpture Festival, laying a solid foundation for the museum.

Afterwards, Ms Chen Shieh-ni, executive of the museum's secretarial office (and currently head of the fourth section at the Bureau of Cultural Affairs), was made concurrent director of the museum. Ms Chen was in charge of the museum until November 1, 2001, when Mr. Hsiao Tzung-huang, head of the International Exchange Section, Department Three, Council for Cultural Affairs, was appointed director of the Museum of Fine Arts.

Mayor Hsieh Chang-ting paid close attention to the construction of the Neiweipi Cultural Park after his election in December 1999. The second phase of construction had already been completed by the end of 2000, and it is expected that final tasks (phase 3) will be completed by July 2003.

The Kaohsiung Bureau of Cultural Affairs formally took over management of the museum on January 1, 2003. The first director of the bureau was Ms. Kuan Pi-ling, who had formerly served as director of the Department of Information. Now that the museum and Kaohsiung's social education agencies were under the administration of the Bureau of Cultural Affairs, the museum was finally acknowledged to be a cultural unit, as well as a social education unit.

Note 1: Abstract of Construction Work, Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts Planning Office, published by the Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts Planning Office, June 20, 1991

Note 2: Records of three master planning hearings concerning the Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts' Neiweipi Cultural Park, January 22, 24, and 27, 1997.

Note 3: Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts Construction Report, published by the Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts Planning Office, June 1990.

Note 4: Hung Ken-shen, Transformation on the Frontier: Development of Modern Printing in Kaohsiung (1970~1997), printed by the Kaohsiung Chung Cheng Cultural Center, March 1, 1999.

Organize the systematic form in municipal Art Museum of Kaohsjung