MoCA Taipei is a museum of contemporary art

Contemporary art

Contemporary art can be defined variously as art produced at this present point in time or art produced since World War II. The definition of the word contemporary would support the first view, but museums of contemporary art commonly define their collections as consisting of art produced...

, located in Taipei

Taipei

Taipei City is the capital of the Republic of China and the central city of the largest metropolitan area of Taiwan. Situated at the northern tip of the island, Taipei is located on the Tamsui River, and is about 25 km southwest of Keelung, its port on the Pacific Ocean...

, Taiwan

Taiwan

Taiwan , also known, especially in the past, as Formosa , is the largest island of the same-named island group of East Asia in the western Pacific Ocean and located off the southeastern coast of mainland China. The island forms over 99% of the current territory of the Republic of China following...

.
It was built during the period of Japanese rule

Taiwan under Japanese rule

Between 1895 and 1945, Taiwan was a dependency of the Empire of Japan. The expansion into Taiwan was a part of Imperial Japan's general policy of southward expansion during the late 19th century....

 in 1921 as Jan Cheng Elementary School, which now occupies a new structure on the back of the historical building.
After WWII, it hosted the Taipei city government and became an important landmark, thanks to its highly recognizable symmetrical building and belltower in historicist style.
After the city government had moved to the new location in Xinyi district, it was designated as a historical building, and re-opened in May 2001 as Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei (MOCA Taipei), as the first museum in Taiwan to be dedicated exclusively to contemporary art.

While showcasing mainly contemporary Taiwanese art, under director Shih Jui-jen its activities have become more and more international. In 2009, it organized a solo show of Taiwanese artist Yang Maolin

Yang Maolin

Yang Maolin is a noted contemporary Taiwanese artist.Born in 1953 in Changhua, Taiwan, Yang studied painting at the Chinese Culture University in Taipei. He co-founded several artists groups linked to the Transavantgarde movement in Taiwan: 101 and the Taipei Group in the 1980s, and Hantooshe in...

 as a pavilion at the Venice Biennale

Venice Biennale

The Venice Biennale is a major contemporary art exhibition that takes place once every two years in Venice, Italy. The Venice Film Festival is part of it. So too is the Venice Biennale of Architecture, which is held in even years...

. In 2009 and 2010 it collaborated with MoCA Shanghai, Today Art Museum Beijing and Guangdong Museum of Art in the organization of the Animamix Biennial.

Address:
39 ChangAn West Road Taipei 103, Taiwan ROC

Opening hours:
Tuesday-Sunday, 10:00a.m.-6:00p.m. Closed on Mondays.

External links

http://www.mocataipei.org.tw/_english/1_about/0_overview.asp

http://universes-in-universe.org/eng/bien/animamix/2009_2010

http://www.mocataipei.org.tw/_chinese/showweb/01_about.asp?ID=100