Taipei Museum Announces Successor After Resignation Of Director

On January 29, Taipei Fine Arts Museum (TFAM) announced that media artist, curator, and educator Jun Jieh Wang succeeded outgoing director Ping Lin, effective January 31. Lin’s resignation was publicized on November 22 last year following public criticism over a political artwork exhibited at TFAM in an exhibition she co-curated in October 2020.

As the public museum’s ninth director, Wang will help facilitate the TWD 5.2 billion (USD 186 million) development of the TFAM arts precinct, south of TFAM within Taipei Expo Park, and which is due to be completed in 2023. The project, aimed to rejuvenate the 38-year-old museum, entails a new three-level, 47,510 square-meter pavilion. Wang will also manage the TWD 1.74 billion (USD 62 million) renovation of the museum’s current collection facilities, slated for 2024.

Taipei-born, Wang is currently associate professor at the Department of New Media Art at Taipei National University of the Arts and the director of the University’s Center for Art and Technology. Previously, he was a member of TFAM’s advisory board from 2010 to 2012, and an executive auditor of its review committee from 2012 to 2014. A pioneer of video art in Taiwan, he held his first solo show of video and installation art, “Little Mutton Dumplings for the Thirteenth Day,” in 1994 at TFAM before graduating from Berlin University of the Arts. He exhibited at the 47th Venice Biennale in 1997. In 2004, he curated a key exhibition of new-media art in Taiwan, “Navigator: Digital Art in the Making,” at Taichung’s National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts. He co-curated the 2006 Taipei Biennial, “Dirty Yoga,” with Dan Cameron at TFAM. Wang has also served as staging visual director for Taipei’s National Symphony Orchestra as well as a member of the Art Committee of the Ministry of Education and an art grant panelist at the Taipei’s Cultural Affairs Department.

Ping Lin’s sudden resignation late last year of the position she has held since 2015 was met with speculation about the public criticism she received from two Taipei city councilors and the mayor of Taipei over a satirical installation by Mei Dean E, I-DEN-TI-TY (1996/2020). Featured in the 2020 TFAM exhibition co-curated by Lin and Nobuo Takamori, “The Secret South: From Cold War Perspective to Global South in Museum Collection,” the work addresses Taiwan’s struggles for diplomatic recognition under the pressure of China. Following the news of Lin’s resignation, the museum insisted that her departure is due to her approaching retirement age, although she will return to teaching at the Tunghai University. 

Celina Lei is an editorial intern at ArtAsiaPacific.

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