The Tower of Hope
Late 1990s
Outside, above the trees between the buildings, a slender steel tower rises on three splayed legs to a ribbed cone at its tip. This is the Tower of Hope, the museum's best known piece of public art and its landmark from the surrounding streets. The legs meet at a round platform with a low railing, then a lattice mast climbs to the summit, and near the base a glass lift shaft and a circular disc painted with the signs of the zodiac give the structure the air of a launch gantry crossed with an observatory. A stone plaque at its foot carries the name in Chinese characters.
The tower belongs to the first generation of public art commissioned for Taiwan's new museums in the nineteen nineties, when the rule that a share of every public building budget should go to art came into force. Its language is optimistic: the sweep of the legs, the lightness of the mast and the cone at the top all suggest a rocket or a signal beacon, a promise that science points upward. Look at the astronomical disc under the platform, with its circle of painted constellations, and at the way the lattice is designed so that the sky shows through it. On a clear Kaohsiung morning the white and grey structure stands out sharply against the blue.
The grounds around the tower are open and free even when the museum is closed, with lawns, palms and other pieces of outdoor sculpture including a large armillary sphere, the ancient Chinese instrument for tracking the heavens. Families picnic here and photographers come at sunset. If you are arriving by train, the tower is the first thing you see as you walk towards the entrance.
Did You Know? The circular disc beneath the platform is painted with the zodiac, turning the base of the tower into a small sky chart.
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