The art museum isn't a museum building—it's rural art fun in Tugou Village!

By / MOOK Scenic Spots Family Travel Life Network Editorial Department

The 2014 Tugou Rural Art Museum officially opened on October 4. Visiting this exhibition in Tugouli, a remote small rural village located in the northernmost part of Tainan City’s Houpi District, might leave you puzzled when you don’t see an actual art museum structure—but actually, as soon as you set foot in this village, you’ve already entered the museum.

With the philosophy of “The village is the art museum, and the art museum is the village!” for over ten years, Tugou has tried using art as a direction for community development. In 2005, Tainan National University of the Arts moved into Tugou, allowing the Tugou Rural Art Museum to use the entire village space as its exhibition venue—rice fields as canvases, agricultural products as artworks, and farmers as artists. Whether it’s village houses, warehouses, or farmsteads, everything becomes part of the exhibit. After 10 years of community development and revitalization, the Tugou Rural Art Museum has successfully gained fame and become an annual highlight for the rural area.

The Tugou Rural Art Museum is not a single museum building, but an entire rural village—not a tourist scenic spot, but a village community full of humanistic charm. The Tugou Rural Art Museum uses the rural area as its unit, rotating exhibits with the seasons, where every villager is a volunteer, striving to transform “hardworking farmers into elegant farmers,” while exploring another possibility of combining art with rural life.