The Hwa Kang Museum is up Yangmingshan, Taipei, in a corner of the Chinese Culture University campus. Established in 1971 by the university's founder Zhang Qi-yun (
This four-floor building has approximately 549m2 of
exhibition space.
PHOTO: Courtesy of the Hwa Kang Museum
The first floor gallery is open for exhibitions to both campus artists and members of the public. The third floor is set to display pieces from the museum's
permanent collections of folk arts and Chinese ceramics. The fourth floor exhibition area is designated for large-scale, semester-long thematic presentations of fine arts. The museum's permanent
collection of modern and
contemporary Chinese paintings and calligraphy contains more than 4,000 masterpieces by Chinese artists. Big-name artists include Wang Yang-ming (
In its Chinese ceramics
collection, porcelain and pottery objects are covered through the ages, from the Neolithic Yang-shao culture to the Ming and Qing dynasties.
The folk art and woodblock print collections range from aged furniture, to embroidery, woodblock prints, temple and
monastery art and Aboriginal
cultural artifacts. All these remarkable collections require at least a half-day trip for serious art lovers.
Currently on the fourth floor, curator Margaret Chen (
The late Zhang Shu-qi never set foot in Taiwan in his lifetime and is thus unknown to the general public. Yet, his outstanding skill at drawing pigeons has been lauded by the late Xu Bei-hong (
Born in 1900, Zhang painted the 3m x 3m Hundred Doves in 1941, when China was being attacked by the Japanese. Applying olive trees and azalea flowers as a background, the painting vividly depicts 100 or more doves, each with different expressions. The painting suggests the artist's desire for peace at a time when the clouds of war were gathering.
The painting was subsequently presented to former US president Franklin D. Roosevelt as a gift in commemoration of his third
presidential inauguration. It was displayed in the White House and later became part of the permanent collection of the former president's library.
Zhang was a talented landscape and birds-and-flower painter. One daring approach that Zhang adopted was to use colored Chinese painting papers, instead of normal white ones, for many of his works done in the US.
"He developed a preference for using powdered lead white and red pigment on colored paper. His colors thus became extremely eye-catching," Margaret Chen said. Fang Yi-min
(方亦民), widow of Zhang Shu-qi, donated 40 of her late husband's works to the university in 1969, after Zhang passed away in 1957.
Zhang Shu-qi expresses his desire for peace through painting doves.
Growing up in a rural, religious community in western Canada, Kyle McCarthy loved hockey, but once he came out at 19, he quit, convinced being openly gay and an active player was untenable. So the 32-year-old says he is “very surprised” by the runaway success of Heated Rivalry, a Canadian-made series about the romance between two closeted gay players in a sport that has historically made gay men feel unwelcome. Ben Baby, the 43-year-old commissioner of the Toronto Gay Hockey Association (TGHA), calls the success of the show — which has catapulted its young lead actors to stardom -- “shocking,” and says
Inside an ordinary-looking townhouse on a narrow road in central Kaohsiung, Tsai A-li (蔡阿李) raised her three children alone for 15 years. As far as the children knew, their father was away working in the US. They were kept in the dark for as long as possible by their mother, for the truth was perhaps too sad and unjust for their young minds to bear. The family home of White Terror victim Ko Chi-hua (柯旗化) is now open to the public. Admission is free and it is just a short walk from the Kaohsiung train station. Walk two blocks south along Jhongshan
The 2018 nine-in-one local elections were a wild ride that no one saw coming. Entering that year, the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) was demoralized and in disarray — and fearing an existential crisis. By the end of the year, the party was riding high and swept most of the country in a landslide, including toppling the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) in their Kaohsiung stronghold. Could something like that happen again on the DPP side in this year’s nine-in-one elections? The short answer is not exactly; the conditions were very specific. However, it does illustrate how swiftly every assumption early in an
Snoop Dogg arrived at Intuit Dome hours before tipoff, long before most fans filled the arena and even before some players. Dressed in a gray suit and black turtleneck, a diamond-encrusted Peacock pendant resting on his chest and purple Chuck Taylor sneakers with gold laces nodding to his lifelong Los Angeles Lakers allegiance, Snoop didn’t rush. He didn’t posture. He waited for his moment to shine as an NBA analyst alongside Reggie Miller and Terry Gannon for Peacock’s recent Golden State Warriors at Los Angeles Clippers broadcast during the second half. With an AP reporter trailing him through the arena for an
RSS