The Taoyuan Museum of Fine Arts (TMoFA) has announced the international open call for the Third Hengshan Calligraphy Award. Artists, curators, and art collectives worldwide are invited to submit proposals for a calligraphy-focused curatorial project encompassing all exhibition spaces of the Hengshan Calligraphy Art Center (HCAC).

Applications will be accepted online from 10:00 a.m. on September 1 to 5:00 p.m. on November 30, 2026 (Taiwan time, UTC+8). This marks the first time since its establishment that the Hengshan Calligraphy Award has opened applications to international participants.

A branch of the Taoyuan Museum of Fine Arts, HCAC is Taiwan’s first public museum dedicated to modern and contemporary calligraphy. Through its exhibitions, HCAC connects diverse cultural traditions, artistic media, and techniques while exploring a wide range of approaches and issues related to calligraphy. It also seeks to establish an important platform for calligraphic art in Asia.

Reflecting the award’s mission to encourage innovative curatorial practices and contemporary expressions of calligraphy, this edition directly invites exhibition and artistic presentation proposals conceived for the entire HCAC. Applicants are encouraged to approach the museum as an integrated creative environment and to consider curatorial narrative, spatial planning, visitor circulation, and audience experience as part of a comprehensive proposal.

Proposals may draw on different cultural traditions, artistic media, technologies, and contemporary issues. They may explore relationships between calligraphy and moving image, installation, performance, technology, or other interdisciplinary practices. The museum particularly welcomes proposals that demonstrate originality, contemporary relevance, and an experimental approach to exhibition-making.

The open call is available to applicants of all nationalities. Artists, curators, and art collectives may apply individually or as a group. Through the award, TMoFA hopes to bring together perspectives from diverse regions and cultural backgrounds and to expand the possibilities of calligraphy within contemporary art.

“Calligraphy is not only a continuation of traditional writing practices; it can also serve as an artistic language that responds to contemporary life and global issues,” said Lin Yung-Neng, Director of the TMoFA. “Through the Hengshan Calligraphy Award, we aim to support forward-looking practices, promote intercultural exchange, and encourage new ways of seeing and experiencing calligraphy.”

The winner will receive a cash prize of NT$300,000. Within three years of the award announcement, TMoFA will commission the winner to develop the selected proposal into a new museum-wide exhibition at HCAC. A separate exhibition production budget of up to NT$2 million will also be provided.

For a winner residing outside Taiwan, airfare support will be available for travel during the exhibition production period and for the exhibition opening. Each shortlisted applicant will receive a cash prize of NT$30,000.