The Control Yuan has censured the Ministry of Culture following a probe into claims that installations of public art have been monopolized by a few agents.
The Control Yuan’s Committee on Educational and Cultural Affairs on Jan. 11 passed an investigative report submitted by Control Yuan members Fan Sun-lu (范巽綠), Su Li-chung (蘇麗瓊) and Lin Sheng-fong (林盛豐) and forwarded the report to government agencies for review, the Control Yuan said in a press release yesterday.
The government has been
Photo: Hsieh Chun-lin, Taipei Times
promoting public art installations for 25 years, spending about NT$9.93 billion (US$316.73 million) to complete 5,126 works in 2,455 projects as of 2021, it said.
However, the installations drew extensive criticism, including that they ended up as garbage, destroyed the beauty of the environment, wasted money and were monopolized by a few agents, it said.
The Regulations on the Installation of Public Art (公共藝術設置辦法) are becoming more complicated and many of the administrative agents involved in public art installation projects lacked expertise in the field, the members said.
From 2011 to 2021, 711 out of 1,517 projects — 47.4 percent — were handled by agents,using about 68.28 percent of all funding, statistics provided by the ministry showed, it said.
In 2021 alone, 84 out of 141 projects were handled by agents, with four agents handling 58 projects, 41 percent, it said.
Some agents had unusual connections with the company that won the bid for the project, but the ministry failed to look into the situation, it added.
There are only 366 members in the ministry’s database of experts and academics, unevenly distributed across expertise, and no new additions were made for years, it said.
Some members are heads of agencies so they would be personally involved in a project while reviewing other projects at the same time, it said.
The promotion of public art had seen some success at first, including the project along Taipei’s Dunhua S Road and Dunhua N Road
and the Dome of Light at the Formosa Boulevard Station in
Kaohsiung, it said.
The ministry failed to adhere to its objective and move with the times to nurture young artists, respond to environmental challenges with innovative solutions or demonstrate sustainable values, which resulted in a lack of public artworks with Taiwanese characteristics, it said.
The Ministry of National Defense even allowed its agencies to import unfinished products from China, it said, citing examples that were found in the Amis Longshan (龍山) Camp, Yuqin (育勤) Camp and Gueiren (歸仁) Camp, it said.
The Ministry of Culture should come up with solutions to these practices as they are not conducive to the development of public art, it said.
The Culture and Arts Reward and Promotion Act (文化藝術獎助及促進條例) requires public buildings and major construction projects to allocate no less than 1 percent of the total cost of the project for public art, which is a stipulation rarely seen in advanced countries, it said.
The Ministry of Culture should seek opinions from experts and refer to foreign practices while planning to amend the act to avoid prescribing unreasonably high budgets, it said.
The Control Yuan also suggested that the ministry establish dedicated and professional teams to provide professional guidance to public art installation projects to prevent any party from obtaining improper benefits.
‘DENIAL DEFENSE’: The US would increase its military presence with uncrewed ships, and submarines, while boosting defense in the Indo-Pacific, a Pete Hegseth memo said The US is reorienting its military strategy to focus primarily on deterring a potential Chinese invasion of Taiwan, a memo signed by US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth showed. The memo also called on Taiwan to increase its defense spending. The document, known as the “Interim National Defense Strategic Guidance,” was distributed this month and detailed the national defense plans of US President Donald Trump’s administration, an article in the Washington Post said on Saturday. It outlines how the US can prepare for a potential war with China and defend itself from threats in the “near abroad,” including Greenland and the Panama
The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) is maintaining close ties with Beijing, the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) said yesterday, hours after a new round of Chinese military drills in the Taiwan Strait began. Political parties in a democracy have a responsibility to be loyal to the nation and defend its sovereignty, DPP spokesman Justin Wu (吳崢) told a news conference in Taipei. His comments came hours after Beijing announced via Chinese state media that the Chinese People’s Liberation Army’s Eastern Theater Command was holding large-scale drills simulating a multi-pronged attack on Taiwan. Contrary to the KMT’s claims that it is staunchly anti-communist, KMT Deputy
RESPONSE: The government would investigate incidents of Taiwanese entertainers in China promoting CCP propaganda online in contravention of the law, the source said Taiwanese entertainers living in China who are found to have contravened cross-strait regulations or collaborated with the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) could be subject to fines, a source said on Sunday. Several Taiwanese entertainers have posted on the social media platform Sina Weibo saying that Taiwan “must be returned” to China, and sharing news articles from Chinese state media. In response, the Mainland Affairs Council (MAC) has asked the Ministry of Culture to investigate whether the entertainers had contravened any laws, and asked for them to be questioned upon their return to Taiwan, an official familiar with the matter said. To curb repeated
Myanmar has turned down an offer of assistance from Taiwanese search-and-rescue teams after a magnitude 7.7 earthquake struck the nation on Friday last week, saying other international aid is sufficient, the National Fire Agency said yesterday. More than 1,700 have been killed and 3,400 injured in the quake that struck near the central Myanmar city of Mandalay early on Friday afternoon, followed minutes later by a magnitude 6.7 aftershock. Worldwide, 13 international search-and-rescue teams have been deployed, with another 13 teams mobilizing, the agency said. Taiwan’s search-and-rescue teams were on standby, but have since been told to stand down, as
RSS