The National Palace Museum has teamed up with the Louvre to present Western Mythology and Legends, an exhibition that narrates ancient myths through art objects dating back to antiquity. Broken down into five sections — Mythic Origins: From a Chaotic Universe to Mount Olympus; Who’s Who of Mythology: The Gods of Olympus; Love Among the Gods: Uncontrollable Passions; Heroic Epics: From Home to Virgil; and Immortal Myths and Legends: From Antiquity to Modernity — the exhibit includes ancient Greek pottery, fresco wall paintings and works of painting and sculpture by such masters of the 16th to 19th centuries as Francois Boucher, Jacques-Louis David, Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres and Antonio Canova.
■ National Palace Museum (國立故宮博物院), 221, Zhishan Rd Sec 2, Taipei City (台北市至善路二段221號), tel: (02) 8692-5588 X2312 (10:30am to 6:30pm). Open daily from 8:30am to 6:30pm. Closes at 8:30pm on Saturdays. The museum will close at 4pm on Sunday, but will remain open throughout the Lunar New Year holiday. Admission for Western Mythology and Legends: NT$280. Regular admission: NT$160
■ Begins Friday. Until May 15
Photo courtesy of NPM
Kinnie Lee (李坤山) provides an in-depth and sympathetic look at Jenn Lann Temple’s (鎮瀾宮) Dajia Matsu Pilgrimage (大甲媽祖繞境進香) through a series of photographs he took over a period of 12 years. Titled Dajia Matsu, the Goddess of the Sea (大甲媽祖), Lee abandons direct depiction of the goddess in his works, and turns to the crowd — the pilgrims walking on foot holding banners, weapons, pennants and incense and those living along the 350km pilgrimage route who offer pilgrims food, beverages and encouragement. According to the museum’s press release, “Lee attempts to explore the footprint of humanity left behind by the early dwellers of the island, and hopes to record and preserve the memories of time and space that are vanishing as the consequence of social and environmental changes.”
■ National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts in Taichung (國立台灣美術館), 2, Wucyuan W Rd Sec 1, Greater Taichung (台中市五權西路一段2號), tel: (04) 2372-3552. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 9am to 5pm
■ Until Feb. 19
Taipei Ceramic Award-winning artist Hsu Chih-chi (許芝綺) presents a new series of sculptures with The Candidness of Absolute Zero (絕對零度的直白). Hsu’s milky-white abstract sculptures are lyrical meditations on the interconnectedness of form and substance.
■ Yingge Ceramics Museum (鶯歌陶瓷博物館), 200 Wenhua Rd, Yingge Dist, New Taipei City (新北市鶯歌區文化路200號), tel: (02) 8677-2727. Open daily from 9:30am to 5pm. Closes at 6pm on Saturdays and Sunday. The museum will be closed on Sunday and Monday for the Lunar New Year holiday. Admission: Free
■ Until Feb. 19
For those of you in Kaohsiung over the Lunar New Year, be sure to check out the Kaohsiung International Container Arts Festival (高雄國際貨櫃藝術節). Artists from Taiwan, Spain, Germany, Italy, and the US use shipping containers to create sculptures and installations that examine global themes such as population displacement, mobility, food production and the place of transcontinental shipping within the global economy.
■ Pier 2 Art Center (高雄駁二藝術特區), 1 Dayong Rd, Yancheng Dist, Greater Kaohsiung (高雄市鹽埕區大勇路1號), tel: (07) 555-0331X240. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 10am to 8pm
■ Until Jan. 31
Sept.16 to Sept. 22 The “anti-communist train” with then-president Chiang Kai-shek’s (蔣介石) face plastered on the engine puffed along the “sugar railway” (糖業鐵路) in May 1955, drawing enthusiastic crowds at 103 stops covering nearly 1,200km. An estimated 1.58 million spectators were treated to propaganda films, plays and received free sugar products. By this time, the state-run Taiwan Sugar Corporation (台糖, Taisugar) had managed to connect the previously separate east-west lines established by Japanese-era sugar factories, allowing the anti-communist train to travel easily from Taichung to Pingtung’s Donggang Township (東港). Last Sunday’s feature (Taiwan in Time: The sugar express) covered the inauguration of the
The corruption cases surrounding former Taipei Mayor and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) head Ko Wen-je (柯文哲) are just one item in the endless cycle of noise and fuss obscuring Taiwan’s deep and urgent structural and social problems. Even the case itself, as James Baron observed in an excellent piece at the Diplomat last week, is only one manifestation of the greater problem of deep-rooted corruption in land development. Last week the government announced a program to permit 25,000 foreign university students, primarily from the Philippines, Indonesia and Malaysia, to work in Taiwan after graduation for 2-4 years. That number is a
This year’s Michelin Gourmand Bib sported 16 new entries in the 126-strong Taiwan directory. The fight for the best braised pork rice and the crispiest scallion pancake painstakingly continued, but what stood out in the lineup this year? Pang Taqueria (胖塔可利亞); Taiwan’s first Michelin-recommended Mexican restaurant. Chef Charles Chen (陳治宇) is a self-confessed Americophile, earning his chef whites at a fine-dining Latin-American fusion restaurant. But what makes this Xinyi (信義) spot stand head and shoulders above Taipei’s existing Mexican offerings? The authenticity. The produce. The care. AUTHENTIC EATS In my time on the island, I have caved too many times to
In the aftermath of the 2020 general elections the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) was demoralized. The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) had crushed them in a second landslide in a row, with their presidential candidate Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) winning more votes than any in Taiwan’s history. The KMT did pick up three legislative seats, but the DPP retained an outright majority. To take responsibility for that catastrophic loss, as is customary, party chairman Wu Den-yih (吳敦義) resigned. This would mark the end of an era of how the party operated and the beginning of a new effort at reform, first under