Director-General of Taiwan’s Bureau of Cultural Heritage (BOCH) Gwo-Long Shy and Professor Alex Ya-Ning of China University of Technology (CUTe) will Visit Australia, January 27-30 to examine how World Heritage sites are managed in Australia and identify relevant approaches that may be taken up in Taiwan as they establish World Heritage level assessment and management standards for a variety of significant and diverse sites across Taiwan.

The visit will focus on meetings with heritage managers and officials and inspections of some of Australia’s key World Heritage sites including, the Sydney Opera House, the Royal Exhibition Building and Carlton Gardens, Melbourne and various World Heritage Listed convict sites such as Cockatoo Island and Hyde Park Barracks in Sydney and Port Arthur in Tasmania.

AusHeritage has signed Memoranda of Understanding with both the Taiwan Bureau of Cultural Heritage and the China University of Technology. The purpose of these agreements is to promote ongoing opportunities for the sharing of knowledge and experiences relating to the conservation of cultural heritage places, objects and traditions between practitioners in Taiwan and Australia.

The Chair of AusHeritage Mr. Vinod Daniel commented that: ‘The visit of Director-general Gwo-Long Shy and Professor Alex Ya-Ning is a milestone event in the development of relations between the cultural heritage industries of Taiwan and Australia. We have been working together for nearly a decade and look forward to the ongoing exchange of expertise between the two industries.

Sites have included the Pao An Kong temple in Taipei, the unique villages of Kinmen Island (close to mainland China) and the Di Wha Street dry goods shop house precinct in Taipei. The focus has varied from historic urban settlements to large mining sites to the technical aspects of protecting and conserving individual houses and temple wall murals and to sharing ideas on museum design and collections management. AusHeritage has collaborated with CUTe and BOCH on 4 separate and complementary workshops on Kinmen Island since 2012 to help develop standards and processes equivalent to World Heritage level management of some intact early village sites. This has developed strong and long standing people to people relationships between our Taiwanese and Australian cultural heritage counterparts and the communities we have worked with.

AusHeritage Ltd, Australia’s network for promoting the Australian heritage industry internationally, has been awarded a grant from the Australia-China Council (Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade) to support the visit to Australia of two senior leaders from the heritage conservation sector in Taiwan.

AusHeritage’s (www.ausheritage.org.au) members include Australian universities, national collecting institutions, state galleries, libraries and museums, private architectural firms and private and government conservation services.

Director-General Shy

Gwo-Long SHY is the Director-General of the Taiwanese Bureau of Cultural Heritage, Ministry of Culture, Government of the Republic of China, and is based in Taichung. He has been a senior bureaucrat and advocate in the cultural affairs sector for many years. Before his appointment to the Bureau of Cultural Heritage, he was the Director of Headquarters Administration of Cultural Heritage, Council for Cultural Affairs, Executive Yuan, the Chief Secretary, Council for Cultural Affairs and the Congressional Liaison Team Leader, Council for Cultural Affairs.
Director-General Shy holds a Master of Arts, Graduate Institute for Social Transformation Studies, Shih Hsin University. His interests include World Heritage management including industrial heritage places, multiculturalism and cultural diversity, intangible cultural heritage, tourism shaped by cultural heritage, preservation and reuse and sustainable development.

Professor Yen

Alex Ya-Ning YEN is Associate Professor, Department of Architecture and the Director, Center for Cultural Sites Rehabilitation and Development, China University of Technology, Taipei. He holds a Ph.D. in Architectural History and Theory, Southeast University, China, 1997 and a M.A. in Architecture, National Cheng Kung University, Taiwan. His research specialties cover the history of architecture and urban environments, cultural heritage conservation and architectural design.
Professor Yen chaired the 25th International Symposium of the International Committee for Documentation of Cultural Heritage (CIPA) in 2015 and is an associate member of the Executive Board. He is Director of both the Architectural Institute of Taiwan and the Association for the Conservation of Cultural Property of the Republic of China.

For a report on the recent Taiwanese delegation visit to Australia, go to:

TaiwanStudyTour2016-part_1.pdf

TaiwanStudyTour2016-part_2.pdf

TaiwanStudyTour2016-part_3.pdf

Further information contact: Mr Ian Cook
Email: ianlcook@bigpond.com
Mobile: 0400013511

Or
Deputy Chair
Peter Romey
Email: peterr@gml.com.au
Mobile: 0417502381