Enchanting Taiwan (台灣風土的魅力) is a retrospective exhibition that offers a comprehensive look at Lin Hsin-yueh’s (林惺嶽) artistic thought and works. Lin’s brush and pen works have profoundly influenced several different periods of Taiwanese modern art. For half a century, he has built up a copious and significant collection of paintings and publications. This exhibition has three parts: The first includes 138 oil and watercolor paintings produced from the 1960s up to 2012. Four of these are large-scale oil paintings — Returning Home (1998), Blessed Hualien (2010), Formosan Landlocked Salmon (2011) and Glory of the God Tree Forest (2012) — that are being unveiled for the first time at Taipei Fine Arts Museum. The second part displays documents by or about the artist, and include a biographical timeline (in both Chinese and English), dozens of exhibition catalogues and art reviews from previous years and rare articles such as hand-written drafts of his compositions. Finally, the exhibition features a documentary on Lin called The Boundless River that was produced by Public Television Service.
■ Taipei Fine Arts Museum (TFAM, 台北市立美術館), 181, Zhongshan N Rd Sec 3, Taipei City (台北市中山北路三段181號), tel: (02) 2595-7656. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 9:30am to 5:30pm and until 8:30pm on Saturdays. Admission: NT$30
■ Until May 5
Photo courtesy of TFAM
The Divine Michelangelo showcases 105 works by the Italian Renaissance sculptor, architect, poet and painter, including reproductions of the artist’s David and Pieta, details from his fresco The Last Judgment in the Sistine Chapel and 14 original drawings and manuscripts. Divided into five sections — Life of Michelangelo: Public and Private, Sculpture and Painting of Michelangelo, Architecture and Poetry of Michelangelo, Clash of Titans: Da Vinci vs Michelangelo and Original Manuscripts from Casa Buonarroti — the exhibition provides a comprehensive introduction to one of the three greats of Renaissance art.
■ National Museum of History (國立歷史博物館), 49 Nanhai Rd, Taipei City (台北市南海路49號), tel: (02) 2361-0270. Open Tuesdays to Sundays from 10am to 6pm. Admission to Michelangelo: NT$250; general admission: NT$30
■ Until May 12
The Yingge Ceramics Museum is currently holding two special exhibitions. The syntactically bizarre Who the Animal becomes the Teapot? (誰把動物變成茶壺了?) brings together a number of teapots shaped as animals by Hsu Cheng-cheng (許正昌), which record memories of the artist’s youth and suggests benign interaction between animals and humans. Internal Ocean (深海) is an exhibit of abstract sculpture by Hsu Mei-yueh (徐美月) that examines the notion of human entanglement. According to the museum’s press blurb, Hsu sculptures lead the viewer to examine their “own unknown and deep ‘Inner Ocean.’”
■ Yingge Ceramics Museum (鶯歌陶瓷博物館), 200 Wenhua Rd, Yingge District, 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 Sundays
■ Both exhibits end on March 17
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In recent years, Slovakia has been seen as a highly democratic and Western-oriented Central European country. This image was reinforced by the election of the country’s first female president in 2019, efforts to provide extensive assistance to Ukraine and the strengthening of relations with Taiwan, all of which strengthened Slovakia’s position within the European Union. However, the latest developments in the country suggest that the situation is changing rapidly. As such, the presidential elections to be held on March 23 will be an indicator of whether Slovakia remains in the Western sphere of influence or moves eastward, notably towards Russia and