As one of the annual grand art events in Taiwan, the NATIONAL ART EXHIBITION, ROC is dedicated to promoting artistic talents and supporting artistic creation. Initiated in 2011, the exhibition is about to celebrate its tenth anniversary. Apart from substantial rewards, it also provides a platform for visual artists to demonstrate their great creativity, hence an iconic arts award in Taiwan.

     The call for entries to the 2020 NATIONAL ART EXHIBITION, ROC covered eleven categories, including Ink Painting, Chinese Calligraphy, Seal Engraving, Gouache Painting, Oil Painting, Watercolor Painting, Prints, Sculpture, Photography, New Media Arts, and Mixed Media. We received 989 entries in total, and those in Sculpture and Mixed Media showed a marked increase this year. At the invitation of the National Taiwan Museum of Fine Arts (NTMoFA), experts and scholars from these eleven fields served as the jury who observed the increasingly diverse creations in Taiwan with an open mind and a forward-looking vision. After two rounds of careful selection, a total of 127 entries distinguished themselves, including the winners of Gold, Silver and Bronze Prizes as well as Selected Works. Besides, the Jury-Exemption Prize went to one of the award-winners this year in accordance with the rules. In general, these award-winning entries not only radiate an aura of maturity in terms of form and content, but also adequately display the sui generis qualities of different media, which is quite an accomplishment.

The 2020 NATIONAL ART EXHIBITION, ROC is scheduled to be on view at the NTMoFA’s Galleries 103-107, Galleries 203-205, and the Gallery Street from 20^th June to 27^th September 2020. Featuring the award-winning and selected works, together with those by seven exempt award holders, this exhibition touches upon a riotous profusion of issues ranging from politics and history to community culture, introspection and conceptual reconstruction, indicating that the artists have profoundly reflected and analyzed the current shape of things. The NATIONAL ART EXHIBITION, ROC is tantamount to a competitive arena, in which creators can give full play to their brilliant abilities and transmute their observations or feelings into masterpieces from various aspects with profundity. As a response to contemporary artistic trends and thoughts, the NTMoFA has added the category of “Mixed Media” to this annual grand exhibition since 2019, expecting these kaleidoscopic media to vie for attention and engage in a meaningful dialogue, thereby helping the exhibition capture the zeitgeist. The NTMoFA will continue to accommodate the expectations and opinions about the NATIONAL ART EXHIBITION, ROC from all social circles, introducing a further refinement to the competition and selection rules, so as to encourage domestic creative practice and galvanize the talents in each field into continuous progress and presentation. We honestly expect the healthy competition through this open call for entries to boost the creative energy in Taiwan’s thriving art scene.