The Tainan Art Museum opened in 2019 and occupies two separate buildings in the old city. Building 1 is a restored 1931 Japanese colonial-era police headquarters — a dignified brick structure with a new interior — while Building 2 is a purpose-built contemporary building completed in 2019, designed by Japanese architect Shigeru Ban, with a distinctive geometric facade of layered white panels that filter light in different ways through the day.
The permanent collection emphasises Taiwanese art and artists with a particular focus on southern Taiwan, including works connected to Tainan's long history as a cultural centre. Temporary exhibitions rotate regularly and tend toward ambitious international programming alongside Taiwanese contemporary art. The museum is young by institutional standards and still finding its identity, but the architecture of both buildings is worth seeing, and the combination of colonial and contemporary sits naturally with the rest of Tainan's urban layering.