‘Getting lost is good’: Suspension bridge and floating stairs bring fun and excitement to Taiwan’s great new museum | Art and design

WWalking around the new Taichung Art Museum in central Taiwan, directions are an abstract concept. Designed by Japanese architecture powerhouse Sanaa, the complex is a collection of eight skewed buildings, mixing an art museum and a municipal library, covered in silver grid-like walls, with soaring ceilings and winding corridors.

Past the atrium – a lively open space that is neither inside nor outside – the visitor wanders around the corridors and ramps, finding themselves in the library one minute and a world-class art gallery the next. The door might suddenly lead to a suspension bridge over a rooftop garden, with sweeping views of Taichung Central Park, or to a cozy reading room for teenagers. Stairs float on the exterior of buildings, and floor levels are differentiated, complementing the purpose and liveliness of a given space rather than achieving overall consistency.

“It’s easy to get lost,” Lan Yuhua, a research assistant at the museum, says with a laugh. But she says this is something we have to accept: “We say losing is good.”

The Taichung Museum of Art is a local government-led project, the latest in a series of high-profile, ambitiously designed museums and performance spaces that have opened in Taiwan in the past two decades.

Led by 2010 Pritzker Prize winners Kazuyo Sejima and Ryo Nishizawa, Sanaa also designed the new Museum of Contemporary Art in New York and the Sydney Modern Gallery. They worked with Taiwanese firm Ricky Liu & Associates Architects+Planners on a six-year construction commissioned by the Taichung city government, which simply requested an art museum and library be built on the same site.

The final product has dissolved the boundaries between the two, and there is a feeling that the complex is designed to slow you down. It’s easy to imagine a day spent in the library reading or working, or taking breaks by walking the art halls.

“We are very happy to be together in the library, because I believe this can open up another layer of audience to us,” says Ye Hsien Lai, director of the museum.

Their inaugural show includes commissions from South Korean artist Heeju Yang and Taiwanese artist Michael Lin. Yang’s work is an abstract image of banyan trees and fireflies that are ubiquitous in Taiwan and Korea. Hanging in the 27-metre-high central atrium, it combines distinctive venetian blinds, lights and steel frames. At night, the light from its glowing action can be seen through the mesh over a kilometer away.

The larger opening exhibition, Calling All Beings, is an eclectic but cohesive mix of commissioned works and newly acquired pieces by artists from 20 countries. Curated by an international team from Taiwan, Romania, Korea, and the United States, it juxtaposes key Taiwanese painters of the mid-twentieth century alongside postmodern video works. In something of a coup, the curators also acquired early original sketches for Antoine de Saint-Exupery’s book, The Little Prince, and archival photographs of Helen Keller.

It focuses on Taiwanese artists, especially artists from Taichung. There is a particular focus on including artists with disabilities – a timely effort in the same week that Nina Callow became the first artist with a learning disability to receive the £25,000 Turner Prize.

The museum will officially open to the public on December 13. They expect international press and visiting museum directors, but otherwise it’s a mostly local crowd. At least for now.

Taiwan’s international profile is often linked to geopolitics and threats of invasion, not the arts. But this is slowly changing, and events such as Art Taipei and the Taipei Biennale attract larger crowds every year. For at least half a decade, the scene has been described as “undergoing a vital transformation” and “gaining momentum on the global stage.”

For Taiwan’s art sector, this new museum is an opportunity to strengthen Taiwan’s presence in the global art scene and further “decentralize” it from the capital, Taipei. Taichung, the second largest city, is a short and easy ride from Taipei by high-speed rail, and already hosts a prestigious fine arts museum and a thriving private gallery sector. But it struggles to attract international art lovers.

“It’s dynamic and vibrant now. We hope that Taichung will become a prominent Asian city in a few years,” says Lai.

The new museum represents a “potential game-changer” for Taiwan, “shifting the focus from north to south,” says Claudia Chen, president of the Taiwan Art Gallery Association.

“While Taichung and southern Taiwan have witnessed many arts and cultural events in the past, none have reached the scale and importance of Taipei,” Chen says.

Jenny Yeh, executive director of the Winsing Arts Foundation, says Sana’a’s participation in the project attracted international attention and built on artistic momentum in Taiwan. “This will encourage more international visitors to explore beyond Taipei and gain a fuller sense of Taiwan’s cultural landscape. Overall, it will be a big boost to Taiwan’s visibility on the world stage.”

Additional reporting by Jason Tzu Kuan Le