Taipei's Cultural Affairs Bureau yesterday temporarily took over the Taipei Fine Arts Museum following the controversial resignation of the museum's director.
Before the new successor is picked by the bureau's five-person task force -- which will be led by bureau Chief Lung Ying-tai (
Lin handed in her resignation on July 14, about four months before her contract expires in November, following friction with Lung.
The war between the two women started on April 23. Lin said in a seminar that Lung applied "White Terror tactics" when the bureau asked the city's anti-corruption unit to conduct an investigation of the Second Taipei Fine Arts Museum, which was yesterday renamed the Taipei Contemporary Art Museum.
Lin also accused Lung of being "a layman interfering in a professional's job" and urged the authorities to respect professionalism in the arts and stop the "abuse of administrative powers."
The criticism not only agitated Lung, but also prompted city councilors to call for action from her and make a decision within 10 days about Lin's future.
"I was shocked when I knew that somebody had accused me of `abusing administrative powers,'" Lung told reporters yesterday. "It's well known that in 16 years of being a professional writer I've never had any interest in either a political career or flattering the authorities."
Lung said it was her job to supervise the five subsidiary units under the bureau, including the museum and she has never interfered nor questioned the professionalism of the directors' concerning the arts.
"To be a director is not an art but rather art administration, and art administration is managerial science," she said. "Just like an artist does not necessarily make a good manager, a good manager does not necessarily have to be an artist."
AGING: As of last month, people aged 65 or older accounted for 20.06 percent of the total population and the number of couples who got married fell by 18,685 from 2024 Taiwan has surpassed South Korea as the country least willing to have children, with an annual crude birthrate of 4.62 per 1,000 people, Ministry of the Interior data showed yesterday. The nation was previously ranked the second-lowest country in terms of total fertility rate, or the average number of children a woman has in her lifetime. However, South Korea’s fertility rate began to recover from 2023, with total fertility rate rising from 0.72 and estimated to reach 0.82 to 0.85 by last year, and the crude birthrate projected at 6.7 per 1,000 people. Japan’s crude birthrate was projected to fall below six,
Conflict with Taiwan could leave China with “massive economic disruption, catastrophic military losses, significant social unrest, and devastating sanctions,” a US think tank said in a report released on Monday. The German Marshall Fund released a report titled If China Attacks Taiwan: The Consequences for China of “Minor Conflict” and “Major War” Scenarios. The report details the “massive” economic, military, social and international costs to China in the event of a minor conflict or major war with Taiwan, estimating that the Chinese People’s Liberation Army (PLA) could sustain losses of more than half of its active-duty ground forces, including 100,000 troops. Understanding Chinese
US President Donald Trump in an interview with the New York Times published on Thursday said that “it’s up to” Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) what China does on Taiwan, but that he would be “very unhappy” with a change in the “status quo.” “He [Xi] considers it to be a part of China, and that’s up to him what he’s going to be doing, but I’ve expressed to him that I would be very unhappy if he did that, and I don’t think he’ll do that. I hope he doesn’t do that,” Trump said. Trump made the comments in the context
SELF-DEFENSE: Tokyo has accelerated its spending goal and its defense minister said the nation needs to discuss whether it should develop nuclear-powered submarines China is ramping up objections to what it sees as Japan’s desire to acquire nuclear weapons, despite Tokyo’s longstanding renunciation of such arms, deepening another fissure in the two neighbors’ increasingly tense ties. In what appears to be a concerted effort, China’s foreign and defense ministries issued statements on Thursday condemning alleged remilitarism efforts by Tokyo. The remarks came as two of the country’s top think tanks jointly issued a 29-page report framing actions by “right-wing forces” in Japan as posing a “serious threat” to world peace. While that report did not define “right-wing forces,” the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs was
RSS