Gazing at the Forest — Chen Cheng-po Outdoor Art Museum

Who was Chen Cheng-po, and why Chiayi?

Chen Cheng-po was a pioneering Taiwanese post-impressionist born in Chiayi in 1895 who studied art in Japan before returning to paint the streets, festivals and mountain vistas of home. Chiayi looks east toward the Ali Mountain range, whose forests and timber railway shaped the city's growth—and that landscape of "Painting Capital Chiayi" is precisely what the museum's title, Gazing at the Forest, evokes. It is the view a resident sees when they stand in the plain and look toward the mountains: warm yellow earth, lush foliage, and the pulse of a modernising town, all rendered through the painter's eyes.↗↗

The museum was inaugurated on 25 March 2019, a date loaded with meaning: Taiwan's Art Festival day and also the anniversary of Chen's death in 1947. His family foundation and the Chiayi City Cultural Bureau planned it together, hoping to carry the master's work out of galleries and into everyday life.↗↗

Three walks through a vanished Chiayi

The eighteen paintings are grouped into three themed zones that move from the intimate to the sweeping.↗

Zone A, "Ximenting 2-chome 125," takes its name from the painter's own house address and gathers self-portraits, his final work, and the scenes he knew best—the view from his rooftop looking south and the city street he returned to again and again.↗

Zone B, "Tainan Prefecture, Chiayi District, Chiayi Street," uses the formal administrative name adopted after the 1920 reforms. Here you wander through landscapes painted from the late 1920s to the early 1930s: outskirts and town centre, elevated overlooks, and glimpses of ordinary residents going about daily life.↗

Zone C, "North Latitude 23°27′4″," borrows the coordinates inscribed on the second Tropic of Capricorn marker tower. It presents Chen's depictions of the tropic markers alongside two images of the Chiayi sawmill he painted in 1921 and again in 1946—linking the natural gifts of the forest, the felling and use of its timber, and the grand sweep of the city's history.↗

What to look for

Among the works on display are several of Chen's most recognisable subjects: a second self-portrait, Chiayi street scenes and outskirts, an early pastoral field, the August City God (Chenghuang) temple festival, lumber and timber factories, and a series of mountain views of Yushan (Jade Mountain) rendered in snow, in a warm winter, and seen from afar. Scanning a panel's QR code lets the audio guide tell each painting's story in plain language written to be understood by a six-year-old and a sixty-six-year-old alike.↗↗

Because the museum sits on a lawn and public forecourt rather than inside a hall, visitors can stroll it casually, hold the transparent frames up against the real cityscape, or pair the paintings with the children's picture books and novels the project inspired. It is short, free and gentle—an ideal half-hour stop on a day in Chiayi.↗↗

Visiting

The museum occupies the open space in front of the Chiayi City Cultural Bureau concert hall at No. 275, Zhongxiao Road, in the East District of Chiayi City. The Cultural Bureau's public-access hours are 09:00–17:00, Tuesday to Sunday, with the venue closed on Mondays and on national and customary holidays; because the panels stand in an outdoor plaza, the works themselves are reached simply by walking through this free public space.↗↗

For the richest experience, bring a smartphone with a data connection so you can scan the QR codes and download the Beacon audio guide (available in Chinese, English and Japanese) to hear the stories behind each painting as you view it.↗↗

Note that this is a compact, single-theme installation rather than a large indoor museum—visitor numbers and reviews online are limited, and ratings modest—so treat it as a pleasant, free cultural stop near Chiayi's civic core rather than a full-day attraction.↗