Shu-Wen Lin and Jen-Jung Ku
Electronic Media Review, Volume Seven: 2021-2022
As Taiwan’s first modern and contemporary art museum, the Taipei Fine Arts Museum (TFAM) has played a pivotal role in shaping the nation’s contemporary art landscape since its opening in 1983. Over the decades, TFAM has expanded its collection to include over 5,000 works by both local and international artists. However, with less than 8% of its physical space currently allocated to collection storage, TFAM launched a vault and gallery expansion project in 2021. This initiative—spanning the redesign of exhibition areas to conservation studios—has prompted broader discussions about developing a more holistic and sustainable approach to collection stewardship. This article outlines the history and challenges of contemporary and time-based media art conservation, particularly within state-run museums operating under local regulations. Drawing on the authors’ professional experiences, it identifies critical gaps between theory and practice and advocates for collaborative models involving local vendors, universities, alumni networks, and regional partners. It aims to shed light on the limitations of existing systems and propose alternative strategies to the care of contemporary and time-based media collections in Taiwan.
INTRODUCTION
Conservation in Taiwan is a relatively young professional field, with significant development beginning in the 1990s. Early momentum was driven by growing awareness of the need for conservation professionals, leading to collaborative research exchanges and training initiatives. A significant milestone was the founding of the Graduate Institute of Conservation of Culture Relics and Museology at the Tainan National University of the Arts (TNNUA) in 1999. The program continues to offer rigorous training in the conservation of works on paper, paintings, wooden cultural relics, and preventive conservation.
Responding to the emergence of conservators as a new academic and professional discipline, museums gradually restructured their staffing to incorporate conservation expertise. Today, conservators in the state-run museums are often employed under job titles such as “researchers” or “research fellows,” which also apply to professionals working in curatorial, art history, exhibition, and educational roles. Meanwhile, most other museum positions are filled through the national civil service examination system, which serves as the primary hiring mechanism for public sector roles across a range of institutions, including cultural organizations, social services, and law enforcement agencies.
Despite growing institutional capacity, museums in Taiwan remain under-resourced—particularly when addressing the complex need of contemporary and time-based media art. Between 2013 and 2022, three major conferences and workshops were organized to address these challenges. The first, “The Conservation of Time-Based Media Art,” was hosted by TFAM in 2013, and Joanna Phillips, the time-based media conservator at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, was the guest lecturer and instructor (Appendix 1). In 2015, the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts (NTMoFA) convened a steering committee of local scholars and hosted a two-day conference (Appendix 2). Most recently in 2022, the Taoyuan Museum of Fine Arts (TMoFA) brought together a geographically diverse group of art professionals from East and Southeast Asia to discuss the urgent need for a regional network to support the conservation of contemporary materials across varied linguistic, cultural, and political contexts (Appendix 3).
TFAM houses one of the largest collections of modern and contemporary art in Taiwan. However, staffing remains limited, with only one full-time staff conservator. This situation necessitates that staff conservators possess broad and interdisciplinary knowledge. For instance, one of the co-authors of this article, a paper conservator at TFAM, is responsible not only for daily conservation tasks but also for evaluating and coordinating treatments for a wide range of materials. Additional expertise is often contracted on a project basis, covering areas as diverse as food preservation, media migration, and pest control. These collaborations have helped expand institutional capacity, while introducing new training opportunities, diverse voices and perspectives, and specialized skills into the public sector.
THE DIGITAL PRESERVATION PROJECT
In late 2020, TFAM initiated a digital preservation project to tackle growing challenges posed by time-based media conservation. One of the authors was invited as a visiting conservator to assess existing workflows and infrastructure. A preliminary review identified three major challenges: the absence of a robust local support ecosystem, chronic understaffing in conservation, and a backlog of media works requiring conservation attention.
To foster a local knowledge network, the authors visited faculty members from the departments of Library and Information Science at National Taiwan University and National Taiwan Normal University—both of which had previously undertaken digital preservation efforts for archival collections. Additionally, a series of internal lectures and workshops introduced TFAM staff to open-source digital preservation tools, including those used for quality control and checksum validation. These training sessions were also extended to graduate students through collaboration with TNNUA’s conservation program. Although time constraints limited the depth of these training activities, they marked an important step in integrating digital preservation concepts into institutional workflows. In addition, TFAM facilitated exchanges with professionals from the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) and the Smithsonian Institution to explore the technical requirements for building a digital art vault.
These pan- and cross-institutional dialogues contributed to the development of preservation strategies for new media acquisitions and the initiation of a baseline survey to better understand the scope of TFAM’s time-based media holdings. These efforts attempted to broaden the museum’s capacity to handle contemporary and time-based media, while also supporting the development of regional knowledge networks.
CONCLUSION
Ongoing efforts to advocate and advance contemporary and time-based media conservation in Taiwan are shaped by community engagement, institutional constraints, and evolving legislative frameworks. Yet, through interdisciplinary collaboration, knowledge exchange, and professional development, we aim to build a sustainable, contextually relevant model for the conservation of contemporary cultural heritage in Taiwan.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We are grateful to colleagues who generously shared their knowledge throughout the process. We would like to thank Ping Lin and Mei-Ching Fang (TFAM), Jun-Yin Hsiao and Hsih-Hsin Chiu (JC Cultural and Creative Service Co), Hao-Ren Ke (National Taiwan Normal University), Jieh Hsiang (National Taiwan University), Saskia Wu (National Taiwan Normal University), Isabel Meyer and Crystal Sanchez (Smithsonian Institute), and Caroline Gil Rodríguez (Museum of Fine Arts, Houston).
Appendix 1. “THE CONSERVATION OF TIME-BASED MEDIA ART” AGENDA, TAPEI MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS, 2013
Appendix 2. INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM AGENDA: “COLLECTING AND EXHIBITING NEW MEDIA ARTS,” NATIONAL TAIWAN MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS, 2015
Appendix 3. “PAST/PRESENT: COLLECTING, EXHIBITING AND CONSERVING CONTEMPORARY ART IN ASIA” PROGRAM AGENDA, TAOYUAN MUSEUM OF FINE ARTS, 2022
AUTHORS
Shu-Wen Lin
Art Gallery of Ontario
Toronto, Canada
Jen-Jung Ku
Taipei Fine Arts Museum
Taipei City, Taiwan