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West District, Chiayi · Municipal museum in a converted heritage building

Chiayi Art Museum

The 1936 tobacco and liquor monopoly bureau, now the city's own art museum, five minutes' walk from the railway station.

Looking down into the museum's full-height atrium, a long narrow wooden boat rests on the floor hung with rows of small coloured objects, visitors standing around it and a timber-framed glass wall to the right.

The museum atrium

Lin Hui-ju · 2026

A current view through the museum atrium, visitors and several installations occupying the three-floor volume. Photograph: Lin Hui-ru / PeoPo.

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Most of Chiayi's contemporary art history happened in the street and little of it survives. This is one of the few places that keeps it and is willing to tell it again.

The museum was converted from the 1936 branch of the tobacco and liquor monopoly bureau. The heritage wing and the main building join around a full-height atrium, with timber framing and glass dropping light from above. Chiayi has long been called the city of painting, and the museum's ordinary work runs along that line.

Floors one to three of the main building hold the main galleries. The 2026 annual exhibition, Emerging Publics: Chiayi's Contemporary Art Scene 1996–2006, fills all three until October 25. Open Tuesday to Sunday 9:00–17:00, closed Monday.

Visitors stand between a large white angular sculpture and a wall of paintings in the gallery on opening day.

The gallery on opening day

Ding Wei-jie · 2026

Opening day on the first floor of Emerging Publics: a large white sculpture among visitors in front of a wall of paintings. Photograph: Ding Wei-jie / Liberty Times Arts Network.

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A dozen visitors stand around a long table covered with a hand-drawn street map, on which sit a white cone, small lantern-like houses, and cloth-wrapped statue models; a man at the centre explains into a microphone.

Visitors at the map table

2026

The first-floor city map in Emerging Publics, with models and records of work made around Chiayi. Photograph supplied by Chiayi City Government. Source: Liberty Times Arts Network.

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Old black-and-white and colour working photographs lie flat under glass in the gallery; a curly-haired man stands at the right talking while a young woman leans in from the left to look.

Wang Wen-chih looking at himself thirty years ago

Lin Hui-ju · 2026

Wang Wen-chih beside the archive of his earlier work, standing with photographs and labels from 1996. Photograph: Lin Hui-ru / PeoPo.

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A hand-drawn map of Chiayi's streets covers a table, with a small statue wrapped in layers of red, yellow, and blue satin standing on it, the word for unity carved on its base.

The wrapped statue, at model scale

Lin Hui-ju · 2026

A miniature return to Wang Wen-chih's 1996 wrapped-statue action, standing on a street map inside the current exhibition. Photograph: Lin Hui-ru / PeoPo.

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Get there

Public transport

From the front exit of Chiayi railway station, walk north along Zhongshan Road and turn into Guangning Street — about five minutes. From Chiayi HSR, take the BRT to the railway station and walk. The lanes by the museum are narrow, so use a nearby car park if you drive.

Sources

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