The Taipei Biennial is the most important exhibition for promoting contemporary art held by the Taipei Fine Arts Museum.
Between 1984 and 1991, the Taipei Fine Arts Museum hosted the exhibition projects "Contemporary Art trends in the R.O.C" and "An Exhibition of Contemporary Chinese Sculpture in the Republic of China" on alternate years. In 1992, these two exhibitions were consolidated to form The Taipei Biennial of Contemporary Art, which was the precursor to today's Taipei Biennial. In its early years the artists participating in the exhibition were selected through an open judging process.
In 1998, after more than a decade of changes, and in order to adapt to the 'biennial' trend, and to promote Taiwan's contemporary art internationally, the Taipei Fine Arts Museum began to invite internationally-renowned curators to cooperate with curators from Taiwan. Since then, the Taipei Biennial has introduced new artistic ideas from around the world that act as a driver of dialogue between Taiwan and other cultures, becoming a primary symbol of Taiwan's contemporary art development and international artistic exchange.
Founded in 1983, Taipei Fine Arts Museum (TFAM) is Taiwan’s first museum of modern and contemporary art. Located in Taipei, the museum occupies over 20,000 square meters of space, of which 11,741 square meters are devoted to exhibitions. The inception of the TFAM was a response to the budding movement of modern art in Taiwan. Over the past decades, TFAM has dedicated itself to the development of modern art in Taiwan while staying abreast of ongoing trends in contemporary art.
TFAM has been participating La Biennale di Venezia since 1995. On the other hand. the museum has been hosting the Taipei Biennial since 1998, inviting internationally-renowned curators and artists to cooperate with the local artistic circle. The shows held over the past decades have increased the visibility of Taiwan and expanded the global networks on the world stage.
Over the past decades, TFAM has not only served as a platform to showcase exceptional works from both domestic and foreign artists, but also long become an incubator to engage in-depth exchanges between the Taiwanese and international art ecology. In the recent years, major retrospective of internationally renowned artists from Asia and chronological exhibitions of TFAM collection were held, these include Cai Guo-Qiang: Hanging Out in the Museum in 2009, Ai Weiwei Absent in 2011, View–Point: A Retrospective Exhibition of Li Yuan-chia, Xu Bing: A Retrospective in 2014, and Formosa in Formation: Selected works from the Taipei Fine Arts Museum Collection in 2015.
