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What kind of space is an art museum’s “storage room?”

Perhaps many of us share a common experience: as children, we would keep cherished items in a special box, and as time passed, we’d keep adding to this “collection.” Sometimes, we’d take them out for our own enjoyment or show them to friends.

Art museums also have their “collections,” housed in spaces specifically designated as “Collection Storage Rooms”—essentially, the sanctuary for these works of art.

The exhibition “Pop-up Collection Highlights” features five select pieces from the Taoyuan Museum of Fine Arts’ storage room. Collaborating with illustrator Chang Hsiao-Chi, it creatively scripts a narrative that opens a door into the museum’s history, inviting visitors to explore the abodes of artistic imagination. This storage room is a confluence of myriad stories, offering insights into the artists’ life experiences, concerns, and perspectives on the world. Here, we are given the opportunity to delve into the artworks, letting the artists’ whimsy carry us on unexpected journeys.

The curation focuses on works in the museum’s collection that are rich in visual exploration, prompting visitors to consider the following questions: How are the tactile qualities of images revealed? How do material and light interact to generate imagery? What characterizes the images of our digital age? What sorts of visual experiences do still and moving images provide? And how do images articulate space in relation to each other?

The exhibition collaborates with artists to reimagine various innovative ways of viewing the collection. It aims to endow these works with new spatial contexts, focusing on sensory exploration, tactile engagement, bodily rhythms, and interactive elements, all as means to mutually explore and respond to what artists think and feel.