Three museums in Korea have come together to find a way to persevere amid the pandemic through a new online platform aimed at audiences from home and abroad. ARKO Art Center, Art Sonje Center and Nam June Paik Art Center have launched the website “Kind Neighbors,” which will operate as an online common place for three months. Artists, curators and experts from both inside and outside the art world will join the new platform.  “Amid the urgent priorities of the social

Arts & Design Aug. 24, 2021

Installation artist Yang Hae-gue will unveil her paper collage series titled “Mesmerizing Mesh” on Tuesday at Kukje Gallery in central Seoul, a year after she showed a glimpse of her paper artwork at her solo exhibition held at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea. The “Mesmerizing Mesh” collage series is created with hanji, Korean mulberry paper, and inspired by “kkasugi,” or sacred paper cutting, which refers to shaman paper objects o

Arts & Design Aug. 23, 2021

As soon as the Seoul Museum of Craft Art opened in late July near Insa-dong, a popular tourist destination in central Seoul, visitor slots filled up quickly. That was an indication of how long people had waited for a museum dedicated to Korean crafts. The country’s first craft museum occupies the former site of Poongmoon Girls’ High School in Jongno-gu, which relocated to Gangnam-gu in 2017 and became a coed school.  Some of the school buildings have been renovated and turned

Arts & Design Aug. 21, 2021

The British Council Korea and Korea Foundation announced on Friday the winning project on climate change after reviewing projects proposed by cross-border teams from South Korea and the UK. The winning project, “The Greenverse,” was jointly suggested by the Art Center Nabi in Seoul, Watershed, a digital media center in the UK, and Bang and Lee, a Seoul-based artistic duo that explores various aspects of contemporary life such as effects of technology and networked societies. Twen

Arts & Design Aug. 21, 2021

Former Culture Minister Park Yang-woo was appointed as the new president of the Gwangju Biennale Foundation which will become his second time to lead the organization, according to the foundation. “Park will start his new position as early as this month. The presidency term is three years and allows consecutive terms,” an official from the foundation told The Korea Herald on Friday. The announcement of the new president was made after the committee meeting held Tuesday. Park pre

Arts & Design Aug. 20, 2021

Arts Council Korea on Tuesday announced that Lee Young-chul would serve as the artistic director of the Korean Pavilion at the 59th Venice Biennale. Lee is currently an art professor at Kaywon University of Art and Design. Born in 1957, Lee became the inaugural director of the Nam June Paik Art Center in 2008 and the chief curator of the second Gwangju Biennale in 1996. Arko also announced that media artist Kim Yun-chul had been chosen to work on the Korean Pavilion’s theme for the up

Arts & Design Aug. 18, 2021

The National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea will present exhibitions in collaboration with regional museums in Suwon, Jeongeup and Jeju Island to allow more people to appreciate the art to strengthen research with regional institutes. The exhibition “Before the Wind” will kick off Thursday at the Suwon Museum of Art in Gyeonggi Province. It will present social participatory art through 189 works by 41 artists who touch on themes dealing with conflict between the two

Arts & Design Aug. 18, 2021

Kwon Ji-an -- an artist and K-pop musician who is better known as Solbi in South Korea -- is presenting her painting series “Just a Cake – Piece of Hope” at Focus Art Fair London 2021 at the Saatchi Gallery in London. The show opened Friday at the Saatchi Gallery and will travel to London’s Fold Gallery and Fitzrovia Gallery, running through Sept. 4. The international art fair was launched in 2019 by the Paris-based art agency HongLee Company to introduce emerging an

Arts & Design Aug. 15, 2021

A beautiful green landscape unfolds for three minutes at 8:21 p.m. every day on the country’s largest LED billboard, at Coex K-Pop Square in Gangnam-gu, southern Seoul. Whether they are waiting for a bus or walking down the street, people look up at the display and see the dense, lush forest appear in the city’s concrete jungle. The landscape is the Demilitarized Zone, a 250-kilometer strip of land that serves as a border between the two Koreas. The land has become an “ec

Arts & Design Aug. 15, 2021

The beauty of Korean craftsmanship will be showcased during the Milan Design Week 2021, the world’s largest design and craftwork fair, which will take place from Sept. 5 to 10 across Milan, Italy. The Korean exhibition will be held under the theme of “All About Attitude,” directed by Kang Jae-young, presenting 126 craftwork pieces by 21 Korean artisans. The craftwork will encompass those created with glass, metals, ceramics, wood, and Korean lacquer.  The theme explore

Arts & Design Aug. 11, 2021

The late Samsung Chairman Lee Kun-hee’s art collection, now on display at the National Museum of Korea, will be the subject of a Naver TV livestream Thursday at 7 p.m. The museum decided to stream its exhibition “A Great Cultural Legacy: Masterpieces From the Bequest of the Late Samsung Chairman Lee Kun-hee” because the pandemic situation in Seoul has made it difficult for people to visit in person over the past month. As soon as the exhibition opened July 21, the public s

Arts & Design Aug. 11, 2021

In yet another summer of COVID-19, many people are longing for the beautiful sight of the ocean, trips to the beach and a chance to swim in the sea. The scenery that so many of us miss can be found in Seoul in the work of Spanish photographer Yosigo. The exhibition “Photographs by Yosigo: Holiday Memories” has become one of the most popular exhibitions in Seoul since it opened in June, having gone viral among young people who can’t go to the beach. The exhibition is so popula

Arts & Design Aug. 10, 2021

Art Center Nabi has launched a project combining cultural heritage and NFTs -- “me.Duck” -- with the Kansong Art and Culture Foundation in efforts to expand NFTs to the cultural heritage realm. “We will initiate the NFT-based cultural project with an aim to preserve the value of cultural heritage and to show respect to Kansong Jeon Hyeong-pil, the founder of the Kansong Art and Culture Foundation,” the art center said in a press release. The Kansong Art and Culture Fo

Arts & Design Aug. 7, 2021

Three masterpieces by video art pioneer Paik Nam-june -- “Turtle,” “Sistine Chapel” and “Forest of Cage-Revolution of the Forest” -- will find a new home at the Ulsan Museum of Art in the southeastern port city. The three pieces will become part of the core collection at the museum, which is under construction and will open to the public in December. “The masterpieces are from different owners. They will be showcased at the museum’s inaugural e

Arts & Design Aug. 7, 2021

Jeong Han-gyo, a 29-year-old resident in Seoul, began to turn his eye to collecting art after making some money in stocks and cryptocurrency. As a novice collector with little knowledge of the art market and not enough money to buy masterpieces by renowned artists, he found an interesting way to purchase works of art -- a group purchase that would purportedly give him fractional ownership of a work. Over the past two months, Jeong has purchased some 15 works of art through fractional ownersh

Arts & Design Aug. 4, 2021