The Taipei Fine Arts Museum opened on August 8, 1983, on ground that had recently served a very different purpose: it was the former site of the United States Taiwan Defense Command, part of the American military presence that anchored the island's Cold War security. The building itself, designed by architect Kao Er-Pan, drew on the Japanese Metabolist Movement -- an architectural philosophy emphasizing organic growth and adaptable structures. The Taipei Municipal Government had committed to the project in 1976, aiming to give the city a museum worthy of international attention. TFAM became the first museum in Taiwan constructed specifically for contemporary art, and its location in what is now the Taipei Expo Park, near Yuanshan metro station, placed it in one of the city's most accessible cultural corridors.

For its first decade, TFAM's flagship event was 'Trends of Modern Art in the R.O.C.,' a biennial that promoted Chinese modernity and mainly invited artists with Republic of China passports. The framing was deliberate: Taiwan's art was presented as a branch of Chinese culture. By the mid-1990s, as Taiwan's democratic transformation gathered momentum, the museum pivoted sharply. The 1996 Taipei Biennial, the largest ever staged, was titled 'The Quest for Identity' and filled every floor of the building with work by 110 artists grappling with what it meant to be Taiwanese. The Taipei Biennial became an international event in 1998, when curator Fumio Nanjo organized 'Site of Desire,' and from 2000 onward, international curators were paired with local co-curators who selected Taiwanese artists for the roster.

Since 1995, TFAM has organized a Taiwan Pavilion at the Venice Biennale, initially recognized as a national pavilion. But starting in 1997, China exerted diplomatic pressure against any use of 'Republic of China' in the presentation. By 2001, Taiwan's pavilion had been downgraded from national status to an institutional participation, and later to a collateral event. The situation was compounded when the Taichung National Museum of Art, organizing a separate Venice entry, insisted on the 'R.O.C.' label -- which only accelerated the diplomatic erosion. Rather than surrender the stage, other Taiwanese institutions joined in: the Kaohsiung Museum of Fine Arts sent work in 2007, MoCA Taipei in 2009. What had been one national pavilion became a scattered constellation of Taiwanese voices, each finding its own way into the world's most prestigious art exhibition.

TFAM's institutional history reads like a syllabus in the tensions between art and authority. After the director's sculpture-kicking incident, the museum became a flashpoint. In 1988, performance artist Lee Ming-Sheng brought a glass of his own feces to a public discussion during the 'World of Dada' exhibition -- which, pointedly, also featured Duchamp's famous urinal. Museum guards beat him. Five years later, Lee became the first Taiwanese artist invited to the Venice Biennale. In 1995, another director, Chang Chen-yu, was forced to resign after months of protests from the art community over his management. As a kind of delayed vindication, in 2006 a red sculpture called 'Homerun' was permanently installed on the plaza facing the main entrance -- the museum's belated concession that red sculptures belong where artists put them.