Taipei Fine Arts Museum Appoints New Director
By Denise Tsui
Ping Lin, the new director of the Taipei Fine Arts Museum, who assumed her role on April 30, 2015. Courtesy Taipei Fine Arts Museum.
The Taipei Fine Arts Museum (TFAM) has appointed professor, curator and critic Ping Lin as director of the 32-year-old institution, a position that has been vacant for the past 15 months.
On April 30, Lin officially assumed her new role as the director of TFAM at a ceremony hosted by the commissioner of the Department of Cultural Affairs, Chung-Hwa Ni. Lin will be inheriting several of the museum’s ongoing projects, including the Taipei Biennial and the Taiwan Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, with the goal of “[promoting] the museum to be the hub among the art field, the city and for the citizens.”
In her ceremonial speech, Lin admitted that TFAM has encountered many challenges in the past few years. Most recently, discontent was expressed by citizens when Taipei failed to secure a spot in hosting Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama’s much revered Asia-tour retrospective, which instead went to Kaohsiung and is soon to make its way to Taichung. Nonetheless, she affirmed that her vision is to “actively and positively strengthen the bonding with the art community and international art circles, building on the museum’s 30 years of experience in exhibitions, academic research, educational promotions and art collection […] to encourage the museum for the next 30 years.” In an email to ArtAsiaPacific, Taiwanese collector Rudy Tseng remarked that he has known Lin personally and has high expectations for her directorship, describing her as “open-minded and ready to improve the connection with the international art market.”
Lin is currently a professor at the Department of Fine Arts at Tunghai University, where she also formerly served as the dean of its Department of Fine Arts and director of its Center of Arts. A respected member of the Taiwanese art community, Lin sits on the board of the public art department of the Ministry of Culture and is a member of the collection committee for TFAM, the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts and the Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts.
