Children's Art Education Center Introduction
After five years of preparation, the Children's Art Education Center officially began operations on Children's Day in 2014, with sponsorship from the TSMC Cultural and Educational Foundation and funding from the Taipei City Government. Through the efforts of the museum staff and architectural design team, the center launched its opening exhibition "Gift," expressing its position as a gift to future generations. The visual signage design features geometric block shapes reminiscent of building blocks, inspired by the tubular structure of the Taipei Fine Arts Museum; the window symbol represents children's small curiosity, peering at the sky from a corner of the window, and exploring a broader world. The Children’s Art Center builds on existing spatial conditions, transforming the periphery into the core of operations while gradually incorporating contemporary art education thinking. In addition to emphasizing learning as a core value, since 2015, it has aimed to expand the definition of education, creating new knowledge production methods and museum experiences. Traditional museums, primarily focused on "objects" in their collections and exhibitions, are gradually shifting to a focus on "people." Museums not only possess rich artistic collections but also serve as friendly spaces for audiences to relax, socialize, and experience art in everyday life. The center emphasizes participatory experiences, hoping that audiences engage in learning through interaction and discussion with peers, generating diverse possibilities for visiting experiences, and developing new relationships between the Taipei Fine Arts Museum and the audience. Contemporary art encompasses a wealth of interdisciplinary knowledge and emphasizes critical thinking and social participation. In 2016, the Children's Art Center’s educational planning officially transformed from the concept of exhibitions to "educational programs," launching one to two each year, combining thematic displays and creative workshops, collaboratively curated by museum educators and contemporary artists. In these "educational programs," museum staff play not only the role of mediators in interpreting artworks but also act as experience transformers. The role of artists is no longer just to be passively invited as creators of works but to actively become constructors of learning experiences. On one hand, the Children’s Art Center's educational programs model artists, allowing children to understand the diverse world through the perspectives of artists, their creative thinking, and problem-solving methods. On the other hand, we invite artists and museum staff to collaborate in discussions to develop interactive installations for each educational program, transforming experiences from their own works or those of other artists into learnable models, guiding the audience from passive visual appreciation to participation at the physical and perceptual levels. Through participation in educational programs, the audience will become active explorers discovering the world, accumulating visual literacy and conceptual reasoning skills. (Source: Children's Art Education Center)
