ART TAIPEI 2021 Art Education Day Artbook DIY Exhibition was on display at Visa Hall of the American Institute in Taiwan on 22nd November. Artwork Presentation Tea Party is held on 19th November and those future artists from Gong-Liao, Ta-Kuan and Zhonghe Junior High Schools are invited at the scene exchanging their creative works. ART TAIPEI Art Education Day collaborated with the American Institute in Taiwan for the first time where Professor Katie Baldwin, an U.S. artist and a Fulbright Scholar, was invited to teach students how to make artbooks creating the first international link with Art Education Day.
Art Education Day as one of the series activities of ART TAIPEI was held by the organizer of ART TAIPEI, Taiwan Art Gallery Association (TAGA) in 2016. The Chairperson of TAGA, Oliver Chang, especially extended his appreciation to Director General of Department of Teacher and Art Education, Ministry of Education, Min-Wen Chang at that time (Current Commissioner of Education Department, New Taipei City Government) for the full support and encouragement to make art education further cultivate in Taiwan.
This Art Education Day-Creative Artbook DIY Event was led by Professor Katie with 45 DIY teaching assistants from Department of Fine Arts, National Taiwan Normal University entering to the educational scenes, three schools from New Taipei City: Gong-Liao Junior High School, Ta-Kuan Junior High School and Zhonghe Junior High School. 70 junior high school students were beneficial and in total 115 students joined this event. They depicted different landscapes between Taiwan and the US in their artbooks that revealed the achievements of bilateral cultural exchange. DIY teaching assistant training course belongs to Cultivation Plans for Exhibition Guides and Art Education DIY, one of the four subplans of Art Education Day. As talents for art exhibition guides are difficult to recruit, TAGA initiated the extended program of Art Education Day with College of Arts, National Taiwan Normal University since 2018 by linking with the campus curriculum for talent cultivation and training the professional guides through industry-academic cooperation.
Art Education Day divides into Art Education Day Visit, Cultivation Plans for Exhibition Guides and Art Education DIY, Educational Curriculum Linkup Program and Art Education DIY. Due to the pandemic, this year’s Art Education Day has been moved online as streaming. Twenty schools in total visited ART TAIPEI 2021 via online guiding platform. Art Education DIY was also impacted by the pandemic with the student travel ban. Instead, the facilitator of Art Education DIY and DIY teaching assistants stepped into the schools and opened the workshop.
Artist Katie Baldwin in Art Education DIY event expressed cheerfully that she was very excited in the beginning as this was something she never tried. She used to interact with small groups and adults but this time she was content to introduce artbook creation with students to know ART TAIPEI. She was also happy to contribute her teaching experiences on this event and exchanged ideas about her creation and teaching with schoolteachers. TAGA was grateful to the Ministry of Education for five-year support and the AIT’s support in 2021 for inviting a Fulbright scholar from the US and organizing a student artwork exhibition at Visa Hall of the AIT for a month (22nd Nov. to 17th Dec.) that brings distinct international creation experience to this art education.
The Secretary General of TAGA, Wen-Mei Yiu, the initiator of ART TAIPEI Art Education Day, expressed that Art Education Day in ART TAIPEI stands out from various major global art fairs. Art education poses an essential impact on Taiwan’s art and cultural cultivation. ART TAIPEI as a fair with more that hundred exhibitors is equipped with the best art educational resource and the most adequate art education realm. TAGA not only observes the development of art industry in Taiwan but also strives to make ART TAIPEI with the best international art educational resource a medium for transmitting aesthetics and the future of the country nourished with culture and art.
