27 Oct With Ten Thousand Works in His Collection, Shih Yun-Wen Brings Market Acumen into Teaching — From Taiwan’s Sugar King to Professor, Guiding Students onto the Sotheby’s Stage.
He is known as Taiwan’s “Sugar King”, the owner of Fong-Nien Fructose, and one of the most renowned collectors of modern and contemporary Chinese painting and calligraphy—Shih Yun-Wen. For the past six years, he has kept a remarkably low profile, devoting himself instead to teaching and research as a visiting professor in the Department of Painting and Calligraphy at Chang Jung Christian University, where his experiments have virtually upended the entire system of pedagogy in traditional ink art.
On October 15, Taipei’s Dazhi district welcomed a new gallery, DaGuan Gallery—Shih Yun-Wen’s latest base, which he describes as “the last mile on my journey of art collecting.” As a billionaire with a collection of over ten thousand works of modern and contemporary Chinese painting and calligraphy, and as a leading member of Ching Wan (a Chinese collectors’ society), Shih stands alongside Quanta chairman Barry Lam as one of the most respected collectors in the Chinese art world. But why open a gallery? Why become a professor? Shih Yun-Wen is charting a singular path in the life of collecting.
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