The National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea, has launched an online store that offers nearly 500 items including exhibition catalogs and books. The online store has 57 exhibition catalogs as well as books. Some have been translated into English, including “The Transnational Museum,” “What Do Museums Collect?” “MMCA Collection 300” and “Architecture and Heritage: Unearthing Future.”...

The Busan Biennale, an international contemporary art show that takes place in the southern port city, is ready to demonstrate that the role of art has become more essential than ever in these pandemic-hit times. “In a situation of a crisis, an art space can be a space of reflection. It can be a space where you can think and share your thought with other people,” Busan Biennale Artistic Director...

Yeol Korean Heritage Preservation Society, a private organization founded to promote Korean beauty and cultural heritage, will host its first exhibition of the year, presenting the beauty of Korean craft art from 12 promising artists. The exhibition, “Ornament,” will be held from Sept. 1 to 28 at Yeol Bukchonga in central Seoul, showcasing a variety of ornaments and scarves that feature Korean t...

Seoul Auction is holding an online auction in conjunction with Artsy, a global art sale platform, featuring artworks by Korean masters as well as international artists, such as Damien Hirst and KAWS. South Korea’s largest auction firm is running a preview until Sept. 1 at the Seoul Auction Gangnam Center. The “Artsy x Seoul Auction: Splash! Splash!” will show around 80 art pieces by artists from...

"Memories overlap over time, and we should not define the meaning of architecture, simply pulling out a certain memory, which can be read as a political action. The issue is not as simple as it may seem,” he said. Lee Hyun-kyung, a researcher at the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences, and Humanities, University of Cambridge, suggests the term “difficult heritage” rather than “negat...

Three venues of the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea (MMCA) -- Seoul, Gwacheon and Deoksugung -- will temporarily close, starting Wednesday, as the situation of the COVID-19 pandemic began to escalate again in the metropolitan area. “We have decided to close for now and will gauge the timing to reopen again,” Tiffany Yun, deputy director of communication and media team at ...

Their mother has been a great motivation for the twins, encouraging them to paint. The exhibition includes “The Valley of the Sacred Mountain,” on which the artist duo collaborated with their mother. “When we got older, we noticed that her desire was to also make art and then we encouraged her,” said the twins. Music has been an important source for the artist as well. Many of the figures in co...

Creativity for Offline Spaces As the online content become more prevalent, how to utilize museum and gallery spaces in the post-coronavirus era -- and the definition of museums themselves -- is a question that is being explored by the art secctor. Independent curator Park Ji-hyung said the pandemic has brought about a crucial paradigm shift in the role of museums. “Museums have been a place wh...

Design company d’strict, which gained global attention in May with its immersive video art installation “Wave” at Coex K-pop Square, has launched a media artist unit “a-strict,” and is showcasing its first exhibition at Kukje Gallery, a commercial gallery in central Seoul. The commercial design company’s a’strict is a loose group of artistic creators from both inside and outside the company. The...

Photographer Choi Kwang-ho’s solo exhibition brings you back to New York 30 years ago through more than 400 of his photographs. The ongoing exhibition at Gallery Ryugaheon in central Seoul -- a space dedicated solely to documentary photography -- showcases a variety of peoples’ lives in New York between 1988 and 1994, when the city was much rougher than it is now. Choi, 65, remembers those five...

Among the items here are Buncheong Ware Square Flattened Bottle with Stamped Designs (Treasure No. 1450) and Large Porcelain Jar (Treasure No. 1441) that inspired the Amorepacific headquarters building designed by David Chipperfield Architects. The metal crafts at the exhibition include ornamental pendants or “norigae” from Joseon era (1932-1910) and hairpins or ”binyeo“ that were once worn by m...

Gaining popularity with the new genre – which combines calligraphy with painting and symbolism – Huh took his solo exhibition, “US Traveling Exhibition of Emography,” to New York, Virginia and Washington D.C, in 2009 and 2010. In the recent years, Huh has moved on to sculpture, aiming to reinterpret his calligraphy in a contemporary way. He refers to his recent work as “emosculpture.” Complete...

Lee was one of the avant-garde artists who began to flourish in the early 1960s after the April Revolution, a mass democracy movement against then-President Rhee Syng-man, the republic’s first president, who held power from 1948 to 1960. During the political turmoil, Lee yearned to break away from the artistic conventions of the day and founded the avant-garde art group Origin together with Suh ...

Shin found her talent in painting when she was young. “In elementary school, we were forced to write consolatory letters to Japanese soldiers. But I was always told to draw on post cards instead of writing letters,” she said. When the Korean War broke out in 1950, South Koreans had to flee to southern regions like Busan where many artists ended up gathering during the wartime and organized join...