The 1980s saw the first wave of modern art museums being established in Taiwan, such as Taipei Fine Arts Museum and Taiwan Provincial Museum of Fine Arts (now National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts); in the 1990s, the idea of connecting “museum of fine arts” with educational research and contemporary arts (Taipei National University of the Arts, Tainan National University of the Arts, and Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei) emerged. Throughout the two decades of industry relocation and economic decline, Taiwan invested dense and compressed contemplation on “art space” and “art field.” The 1980s and 1990s were also when Taiwan’s architecture thrived. As for actual projects, C.Y. Lee inherited the subjective construction of the new Chinese culture of the 1970s, including New Confucianism and Chinese archaeology and folk studies, and strived for fusion of East and West, blending modernism and regional culturalism into straightforward post-modern looks (consistent with Robert Venturi’s observations); both Han Pao-teh and Teng Kun-yen fell within the same conceptual context. Conversely, younger architects, while also nurtured by Modernist architectural aesthetics (mainly Le Corbusier, Ieoh Ming Pei, Kisho Kurokawa, and Tadao Ando), proactively engaged in various postmodern debates and experiments (such as Bernard Tschumi, OMA & Koolhaas, and Arata Isozaki). It was not until the 1990s that they were finally able to contribute through academic education and journal publication, in which magazines like Arch and Taiwan Architecture played instrumental parts. At the same time, Lin Jou-min, Huang Sheng-yuan, Kung Shu-chang & Wu Chien-sen, and Jay Chiu all founded own firms, whereas architecture critics like Ruan Ching-yue and Chi Ti-nan contributed through their innovativeness and criticality. The “Yilan House” project could be regarded as the most iconic new architectural trend before the “Post-921.” Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts (KdMoFA) was conceptualized in such social ambience, becoming the first professional art museum of an art university.

KdMoFA originated from an idea of Professor Ma Shui-long, the second principal in the university’s history. In 1991, the university was relocated to Kuandu (Guandu), and Professor Ma appointed Professor Chang Tzu-lung and Professor Chu Teh-I of the Department of Fine Arts to establish the “Museum Planning Project Committee.” The building was designed by architect C.Y. Lee, and was constructed in 1996. The asymmetrical and imbalanced architecture facilitated a vibrant and winding flow of traffic full of twists and turns through the various spaces of different qualities. After the construction of the building, it took nearly four years to formulate a concrete plan to allocate funds for the necessary professional facilities of the museum, and the museum was able to obtain a grant to remodel the interior with a curatorial proposal that aimed to comb through 100 years of Taiwanese arts. In fact, the concept of “Round Heaven and Square Earth” was realized in the museum’s architecture. On one hand, the architectural volume was the formal expression of the concept, where a “symbol” was decorated on top of the building. Moreover, natural light was introduced through circular and oval skylights, and the overall expression and layout basically followed the localized design logics of “Modernism;” however, at the time, “locality” was still fragmented here in Taiwan—the “Chinoiserie style” manifested through the building’s “form” on one hand, and the local building materials of Taiwan used to construct the building’s volume on the other. Based on the design concept and outcome, an awkward architecture that appealed to “symbols” was constructed during a time where Taiwan was entering a period of Postmodernism and globalization after the lifting of martial law. Perhaps, it unexpectedly raised a question regarding academic space: on one hand, it could not break away from the framework of cultural colonization and get rid of the “lagging” appearance and layout; on the other, the “emptiness” it preserved in advance for future exhibitions as an art museum building could be regarded as the wait for art actions that “responded” to various future possibilities.

In 2000, KdMoFA finally entered the phase of interior renovation. Designed by architect Lin Jou-min, construction began in 2002 and ended in 2004, giving KdMoFA nine exhibition galleries scattering from 1F to 4F. During his tenure, Principal Chiu Kun-liang discussed with the “Museum Preparation Committee,” and named the museum “Kuandu Museum of Fine Arts” in consideration of the university’s local ties. The main gate of the newly constructed KdMoFA emphasized the overall relationship between the museum and the nearby buildings of School of Cultural Resources and TNUA Library. The outdoor open space formed by these three buildings became the museum square suitable for outdoor displays. Entering KdMoFA from the square, the entrance was located on the fourth level of the building. Architect Lin Jou-min served as the interior designer, and used curtain walls of shaped steel and glass to turn the corner room with four solid walls into a Modernist entrance with high perspectivity and sound lighting. Two large circular galleries adjacent to each other created an indoor space with rich artistic and leisure ambience. The elevated ceiling ushered visitors into a single-display gallery with a dome roof and the interdisciplinary gallery above it. This gallery was a unique space of its own, offering a highly versatile exhibition space for sculptures, three-dimensional installations, small- and medium-sized paintings, and interdisciplinary exhibitions. Many galleries designed for exhibitions of various natures could be accessed by walking down the stairs from the entrance. Visitors could walk down the stairs and visit exhibitions in over 1,300 square-meters of exhibition space. The galleries had compact layouts, and as you go further, the space gradually opened up. Furthermore, the architect designed the staircase into a focal axis, lining the walls of the atrium with dark marble strips and fully utilizing the penetrability of the staircase to link heterogenous galleries and platforms, so that this functional space could simultaneously become a channel for line of sight to transcend time and space, allowing visitors to “peek” into other floors; the architect also designed a number of “frame-like” spaces on the same eye level across from the staircase. Lin’s design turned the flow of traffic within the building into a skipping journey where “line of sight” continued to turn, float, and slide. This was a design that realized Postmodernist spatial concept, yet it was masterfully wrapped within this symbolic volume of Modernism, concretely embodying the “inclusiveness” of this museum for future exhibitions.

KdMoFA has achieved prestigious status as a “professional museum of fine arts.” Within Taiwan, the museum continues to provide students exchange and observation opportunities for education and training purposes as a professional exhibition place of modern and contemporary arts; externally, KdMoFA is an exchange platform and network of international art resources and continues to contemplate on the role and function of an art university, as well as its relationship with the development of art, becoming a robust space of artistic perceptions and cultural creativity. The museum looks forward to continue presenting the innovations of Taiwan’s contemporary arts, and strives to become an international professional art museum. Based on such visions, KdMoFA was officially inaugurated in March 2005, and held the inauguration exhibition, “2005 Kuandu Extravaganza,” and hosted the first Kuandu Biennale, “I Have a Dream – 2008 Kuandu Biennale,” in 2008. KdMoFA continues to organize the biennale, and will be hosting the seventh edition of the exhibition this year. KdMoFA’s core operation focuses on research of artists and professional curation, as well as the art and cultural circles’ concerns for issues of the art environment, and proactively establishes cooperative relations with domestic and international public and private art museums and private art and cultural agencies, broadening the scope to include all generations and ethnicities. KdMoFA is known for its annual exhibitions that showcase local culture of Taiwan, as well as contemporary exhibitions focusing on the Asia-Pacific region, creative shows by artists-in-residence at the museum, and annual application exhibitions; KdMoFA also presents international exchange exhibitions and organizes Kuandu Biennale targeting worldwide audiences. KdMoFA operates on a limited budget under the university, and through project funding, it presents events for two key purposes: one, exhibitions that exhibit creative works of Taiwan’s contemporary arts; two, professional exhibitions and seminars for international networking and exchange. Other available timeslots are allocated for activities and exhibitions that strengthen the aforementioned educational purposes and build healthy environment for the development of art in Taiwan.

As a university museum, KdMoFA does not intend to become a sanctuary of the creative production of faculty members and students, extension of academic network, and the university’s reputation and traditions; instead, it strives to become a machine of auto-poïesis after Modernism and Postmodernism (as well as within them). The positioning of the museum shall be defined by the people, times, places, and things, connected with it. First of all, since the museum is located in a place with many art practitioners looking to develop own professional experience and students aspired to become professional artists, KdMoFA is really a machine of “Learning & Growth;” second, since it exists in a historical spacetime that accumulates artistic experience and educational footprints, KdMoFA is also a machine of “Writing & Recording;” moreover, the museum positions itself on multiple geographical locations based on the peoples and their histories, from Guandu, Taipei, Taiwan, East Asia, the Austronesian region, to the world, embracing the inter-reflections of different artistic expressions, and therefore, it is a “Local & Interdisciplinary” machine; lastly, “objects” are the most crucial and essential, as they are the “materials” or “materiality” touched upon by all artistic experiences, as well as the “objects” people rely on for livelihood in response to all the needs in life, thus, the museum is a machine of “Experiment & Qualitative Transformation.” Based on these beliefs, KdMoFA should strive to present the outcomes and courses of artists’ creative journeys for Taiwan’s contemporary arts, promoting an art history of Taiwan that has both “people” and “life.” As for biennale exhibition and international exchange, KdMoFA aims to carry out meaningful dialogues and seek collective breakthroughs. Therefore, KdMoFA challenges and breaks through the exiting mechanism and framework of “biennale exhibition,” rather than following the global trend of blind and hopeless production and expansion and acceleration in terms of scale, size, or connection, launching full-scale display of critical jargons, or pursuing hot topics, especially the newly discovered ethnicities and species. What KdMoFA should do is to carry out sufficient exchange and cooperation with professional art workers in other regions based on artists’ creations and the power of art, and communicate with and learn from other professional art institutions, jointly exploring the possibilities of art cross-regionally. KdMoFA is a museum that has become an organic ecosystem, but it does not advocate biomimicry or environmental protectionism; instead, it is an eco-machine complex woven and constructed by knowledge, experience, substance, life, belief, and action, in response to the question: “What is university?”