Taiwan’s Rainbow Village artworks lost amid renovation
A rainbow-hued village at Taiwan’s Rainbow City is getting a new face. The Art Park is now home to four more buildings, including a new home for the Art Museum. Taiwan’s new president, Tsai Ing-wen, is also putting her signature on a new art project.
In addition, the two most recognizable structures left in the village – the Rainbow House and the Art Palace – have been renovated and turned into a spa, an international-chain restaurant and a music venue called the Rainbow City Arts Center. The former Rainbow House is now a hotel, while the Rainbow Palace will soon become the Rainbow Village Spa.
Tsai, a former student of Harvard University who taught there and was the first woman to lead Taiwan in the National Assembly and the cabinet, announced in 2015 that she would turn over power to the ruling Democratic Progressive Party (DPP). But Tsai and her supporters have been campaigning since then to change the constitution to allow her to remain in power for a second term. Tsai was reelected in 2016 with 78 percent of the vote.
In the meantime, Tsai and her supporters have been quietly renovating the village, which will be known as the Rainbow Valley and open to the public in 2020.
The village’s Rainbow House and Rainbow Palace, which once served as the family home for the Rainbow Village Arts Foundation, will now become the first new buildings in the village in 50 years. Built between 1920 and 1923, it was the only remaining building in the village, and it is now slated to be turned into a new hotel by Tsai’s government.
But it may already have become a new face in the village.
It was already a tourist attraction, but in 2015 the government decided to turn the Rainbow House into a museum, called the Rainbow Museum in honor of the original Rainbow House. The new building will be called the Rainbow City Museum.
It’s a fitting name. The Rainbow City, Taiwan, is a UNESCO World Heritage site that was once the home to a vibrant and vibrant creative community. But it was destroyed by a typhoon in 2013. Rainbow Village was rebuilt in 2016. And as the only remaining building left from the original Rainbow Village, it is