Abstract Yanagi Muneyoshi: A Journey in Search of Beauty Liu, Jienne Curator The National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea Yanagi Muneyoshi(, 1889-1961) was a Japanese philosopher and collector who discovered beauty from everyday objects produced by nameless artisans. He developed a new concept of beauty and a theory on crafts with his unique aesthetic sensibility. He established the Korean Folk Crafts Museum in 1924 and the Japanese Folk Crafts Museum (Nihon Mingeikan) in 1936. He developed the Mingei Theory which focused on the beauty within ordinary lives. The exhibition Yanagi Muneyoshi encompasses 134 items from the collection of the Japanese Folk Crafts Museum to survey Muneyoshi s establishment of new concepts of beauty and development of his theory on crafts from the early 1900s to 1950s. The exhibition is composed of three parts. The first part, Yanagi s Interest in and Study on Modern Western European Culture reviews his early interest by examining his activity as a member of Shirakaba, study of William Blake and his exchange with Bernard Leach. The second part, Yanagi s Encounter with Joseon investigates his recognition of the formative beauty of the East, which was initiated by his encounter with the pottery of Joseon. The third and the last part, Yanagi s Interest in the Arts of the Neighboring Countries and His Notion of Mingei inquires the development of the idea of mingei. The formulation of the concept is a result from Muneyoshi s interest in the East, set forth from Joseon and continued to China, Japan, Ryuku Kingdom, Ainu people, and Taiwan. His diverse and changing interest was a journey to answer the question, What is beauty? The 1920s, a period when Muneyoshi established the concept of mingei, was an era of
radical transition based on industrialization. A modernist idea to achieve the development of culture as well as commerce and industry was prevalent. The development of technologies in crafts was at the center of such an idea. In addition, the Japanese government turned into militarism, invading neighboring countries and exterminating their language, culture and history. Japan s invasion of Manchuria and Sino-Japanese Wars were precursors of the Second World War. Muneyoshi, however, protested against the situation. His concept of mingei turned the focus toward ordinary people who produce and use everyday objects. Mingei contains an idea that it reflects people s quality of life. Itinvolves a close relationship between people s lives and society, which is based on an idea that sound and healthy life is the basis of mingei. Hence, Yanagi Muneyoshi s approach can be read as an attempt to understand the essence of human culture and spirit that go beyond a mere attention to the essence of crafts. Therefore, Mueyoshi s establishment of the concept of mingei and his effort to lead the mingei movement and inaugurate crafts museums were not a retrograde movement to preserve and succeed the old but a venture to lead the creation of tomorrow through the value of ordinary objects that are used and discovered in places where he lived. In this way, mingei means the culture for everyday life that is still valid today.
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Abstract A Study on Traveling Exhibitions f rom New Media Collection : Focusing on the Case of Video Vintage: 1963-1983 The MMCA has been organizing a number of traveling exhibitions that took Korean contemporary art to foreign countries that include Japan and Chile. In 2013, the MMCA organized Who is Alice? and White & White, which were respectively held in Venice and Rome. In October 2013, the museum also opened A Passage o f K orean Contemporar y Sculpture in Jakarta, Indonesia. The MMCA has also been organizing exhibitions that introduce collections from museums in other countries in its Gwacheon and Deoksoogung branches. Collections exhibition from the National Museum of Art, Memor y of Landscape I have never seen, Yanagi Muneyoshi exhibition, and David Hockne y: Big ger Trees Near Warter, which introduced the artist s key works in the collection of the Tate Museum, are good examples of such a direction of exhibitions. Video Vintage: 1963-1983(herein Video Vintage) is a thematic exhibition f ocusing on the new media collection of the Centre Pompidou. It is also a travelling exhibition that has been hosted in a number of countries including Germany, Lebanon and Korea. At present, an institution in Brazil is in discussion with Centre Pompidou to host the exhibition. Travelling exhibitions to f oreign countries tend to require a big budget for basic items such as transportation and insurance fee. On the contrary to the usual case, the only item transported for Video Vintage was a hard drive with the digital files of participating video works to the exhibition. Since all the other items, including video equipment and furniture, were directly done by the hosting museum, the exhibition could be produced in a cost effective way. The exhibition also took a step forward by avoiding to reuse the Lee Soo Jung Associate Curator The National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea original curatorial organization of the exhibition in different venues. Rather, the exhibition has induced cooperation on a practical level by commissioning the most of exhibition organization to hosting institutions, drawing interesting processes of localizations. The exhibition is also a good reference for organizing a travelling exhibition with a new media collection since it has provided in-depth research materials about artists and art works, actively introducing the result of research done by the Centre Pompidou. The background of such a rich archive of research materials lies in the history of Centre Pompidou. The photography/film/video department was established with the opening of the Centre Pompidou in 1977, led by Pontus Hultén, the then director of the institution. The audiovisual service department also commissioned works to artists such as Jean Dupuy and Robert Wilson. The curator who organized Video Vintage, Christine Van Assche, was also the person in charge of collection and research of new media works over thirty years after she had established the New Media Service in 1982. The Future is Now!, an exhibition from the MMCA s new media collection to present the history of new media art in Korea, is organized as a coinciding exhibition of Video Vintage. From the experience of hosting and organizing exhibitions from media art collections, the MMCA has recognized a number of missions for organizing a travelling exhibition to overseas with its own new media art collection. First, there should be more emphasis on the research of new media art works. Second, the MMCA should acquire more new media art works in good quality for its own collection. As of September 30, 2013, the number of new media art works in the MMCA s collection is 107. More than half of the collection is composed of works by major artists such as Nam June Paik, Park Hyun-Ki, and Duck Jun Kwak, which raises a need for more attention to works by promising artists in the field. Third, there is a need for digitalization of collection and systematic management. Centre Pompidou has its own in-house technician in the new media service department. The case of ZKM, an institution in Germany that also hosted Video Vintage, is also notable in terms of managing equipment. ZKM has its own collection of old video equipment from different periods. The purpose of such a collection is to use them in exhibitions with old works with aesthetics that correspond to the time of production of such works. With the opening of the Seoul branch of the MMCA, there are more activities in research and exhibitions on new media art. To promote new media art works by Korean artists who
actively work after Nam June Paik, the MMCA shall start a more systematic collection and research with a long-term perspective. In addition, the MMCA needs more human resources with professional capabilities for research and management of its new media art collection. With such efforts as an underlying foundation, the MMCA s overseas exhibitions from its new media art collection shall be realized with efficient organizations and directions.
Abstract Visual Communication Design Methodolog y of Art Exhibitions Choi Youjin Exhibition Designer The National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea Beyond added value and outcome in this high tech age, the direction of design for a better life is seriously being contemplated recently with a question of how design should be consumed with social responsibility. This considers communication the most important in regards to how design is consumed. Or sharing experiences with the public and a deep understanding of culture are needed at this point. Same applies to exhibition. The medium that can convey the core of delivering value except the artwork itself, or the theme curators intend to tell with clarity and insight is design, which is a formative language. If exhibition design interprets curator s intention wrong and makes a use of visual communication that cannot help audience s understanding, even original and great design with formative aesthetic cannot help causing absence of communication. In 2013, the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art developed new MI on the important issue of opening in Seoul. They paid attention to the distinction and unity of four-museum systems, which are the ones in Gwacheon, in Deoksugung, in Seoul and in Cheongju (opening in 2015) and gave each museum its characteristic. For each specialized exhibition project, research processes on visual communication design methods, in which design can reflect its intention effectively and delivers it to audiences will be open to the public. It will help people make general understanding of exhibition design processes. Also, artworks that were exhibited in the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Gawcheon and Deoksugung in 2013, will be made into a manual of graphic design creations to improve work efficiency and seek for ways to develop design tasks. It will set up guidelines for unified standard
management and the distinction of design creations in the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Seoul.
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Abstract The Development and Realization Strategies of Hanjin Shipping the Box Project Hanjin Shipping the Box Project is an inaugural project of the MMCA. It is a site-specific commissioned project that goes in line with international projects such as the Unilever Series at Tate Modern and LACMA Transformation Project at LACMA in LA, USA. The MMCA is located at the heart of an international city of Seoul. The architecture of the museum has enabled a variety of contemporary art installation projects that take advantage of its spatial characteristics. In addition, the location of the museum has provided opportunities for many corporations to actively support the development of the artistic culture. Contemporary museums require investment of large-scale budget to survey the diverse and dynamic trend of contemporary art. By drawing active support from outside of institutions, large-scale commissioned projects are functioning as a significant gateway to realize creative ideas of contemporary artists. Under this context, the MMCA is planning to lead a positive union of art and capital through its professional curatorship and put the best effort to support creative activities of artists and expand the audience experience. In addition, the MMCA will build an international reputation as the representative cultural complex in Korea. The Seoul branch of the MMCA will not only present traditional forms of artworks; it will encompass audiences of all age groups and diverse tendencies through a variety of programs that include large-scale art projects that captivate audiences attention, film screenings, musical performances and other events. Both domestic and international visitors to the museum will experience valuable opportunities to enjoy and appreciate the dynamic scenes of contemporary art that are experimental and unique. Chu-young Lee Associate Curator The National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea
Abstract The MMCA Seoul Construction Archive Project Kim, Kyoung-Woon Associate Curator The National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea In order to document the historic construction and opening of MMCA Seoul, a longterm archive project has been carried out, recording the entire process of the construction in great detail. The archive project extensively chronicled the construction of the museum from numerous angles, utilizing a variety of audio-visual media, including photography, video, and sound. Photographic documentation was led by two of Korea s most renowned photographers, Suntag Noh and Seung Woo Back, for a period of 5 years from the beginning of the construction process in 2009 to the completion in 2013. Video footage of the construction was recorded by Documentary Korea co. Ltd., a documentary production company, from 2010 for 4 years. The sound recording was taken for 2 years since 2012 by the artist Yangachi. This archive/artwork will be shown in exhibitions and make a great contribution to preserving the memory of those buildings and site.
Abstract Traveling Art: Conservation Strateg y f or the Works of Art in Transit Eunjin Kim Associate Conser vator The National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea Any movement of works of art, even very short distances, can place the works of art at risk. An effective preventive strategy for transportation procedures is the best defence against damage and the right approach to minimize all possible risks. Firstly, museums should have an exhibition and loans policy to define and guide the process. The decision of travel must be made through discussions with museum professionals mainly depending on the condition of works of art. A painting that is intended for travel should be examined by a conservator who will evaluate its present condition in light of the additional risk imposed by handling, transportation, potential exposure to extremes of temperature and relative humidity, the dangers of physical, chemical or biological damage. In this paper, guidelines for packing and crating works of art for travel are suggested according to the process of moving. Conservative treatments prior to the travel to prevent or minimize the risk of damage are necessary. Attaching backing board at the back of canvas painting or inserting data logger for recording environmental changes can be helpful. Document on the condition of painting must be prepared and shared with lenders and checked at the end of every movement. Upon arrival at destination, its unwrapping and uncrating should be carried out in the presence of courier. Any significant change in condition of works of art must be reported immediately to the appropriate person. To safeguard museum s collection, it is essential that all museum professionals including conservators, curators, registrars and also art handlers be involved in planning an exhibition or loan from the very beginning. They must be fully aware of all the risk and complexities
involved in fine art shipping and must try to prevent any occurrence of undesirable accident during movement.
Abstract A Study on Manuscripts Archive of the MMCA Lee, Ji-Eun Archivist The National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea Museums collect archive materials that have a wide variety of characteristics and formats, and different forms of materials require diverse ways of collection that correspond to their unique properties. However, a close look at the ways that have been employed to collect archive materials for the MMCA reveals a tendency that different materials were collected through similar methods without considering their particular characteristics. At present, MMCA Research Center holds collections of. Considering the nature of the collections as an artificial conglomeration of materials from diverse sources with specific purposes, the materials that MMCA Research Center holds shall be defined as manuscript collections. MMCA Research Center shall also be considered as an archive that focuses on collecting materials. In other words, it should be regarded as a manuscript archive. Museums and art institutions should build archives to practice the fundamental function of collection, management, preservation, research, exhibition, and education. However, archiving has not been regarded as a primary function of museums due to the difficulties in producing visible results in comparison to exhibition and education while it requires an investment in time and budget. Despite the difficulties, the MMCA opened the Art Research Center in the Gwacheon branch in October 2013. The establishment of the research center is a stepping stone for the museum to activate functions of research and academic activities. While the concept of Larchiveum (libraries + archives + museums) seems to become the ideal of museums, the MMCA s move to establish a research center is indeed an attempt that is a bit late than other institutions. MMCA Research Center should recognize that it
is behind other institutions and strengthen its infrastructure such as storage facilities and hire more professional staffs. In addition, it should also spread the idea that building an archive requires investment of time with long-term plans. To build and manage archives and collections on a national level through a standardized manual, it is also necessary for the MMCA to collaborate with other institutions and share the result. Through such efforts, the art archive of the research center should also play a role of creating connections of communication between the present and past and providing clues for new creations, which shall be done by transmitting the artistic value of a generation to the contemporaries or the future generations.
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Abstract A Study on Building a Media Archive: Focusing on the Case of Park Hyun-Ki Collection Yang, Jungae Archivist The National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea format in a sequential order when a new digitalization standard is established. At present, digitalization of the archive is done only for the purpose of preserving the damaged audiovisual materials. In the future, however, the range of digitalization will expand to materials without any damage in cooperation with professionals in video art preservation. The archive of the Park Hyun-Ki collection will be opened to the public via the Art Research Center of the MMCA opened in October 2013. The archive is expected that it provides possibilities for in-depth studies of Park Hyun-Ki s life and his works as well as foundation of the study on the history of Korean video art. This study introduces a process to build media archives in the MMCA, focusing on the case of the Park Hyun-Ki collection. The collection is donated to the museum in 2012 as an archive, which composed of approximately 20,000 items that have been produced or collected by a pioneering Korean media artist Park Hyun-Ki(1942-2000). It contains a wide variety of audio-visual materials that serve as the original source of the artist s works and related documents. After the indexing, scheduled processes are in progress, including cleaning and preservation, categorization, packing and labeling, and digitalization. Here, the primary focus in building archives is to establish guidelines to preserve and digitalize audio-visual materials. Based on the MMCA Digitalization Guidelines Initiative for the Special Materials(1.0), Audio-visual materials of the Park Hyun-Ki collection have been digitalized, considering the criteria of condition(level of damage), importance(uniqueness and rarity), and potential usage(for exhibition or reading). In order to minimize damage, the original audio-visual media are played and captured only once while they are transferred to digital media. In addition, loseless and high definition data-formats are used to respond to a variety of possible requests on the materials in the future. Basically the digitalization process is based on the FADGI(Federal Agencies Digitization Guidelines Initiative), but data-compression methods are applied differently to each item upon its properties, preservation condition, purpose of archiving, and availability of data storage. The resulting items are stored in forms of digital files and Digi-beta tapes. In principle, the stored data shall be migrated into a new
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Abstract A Study on the Application Strategies of the Institutional Archive of the MMCA Lee, Jeehee Archivist The National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea The two main categories of the MMCA s archive are art archive and institutional archive. According to the Guideline f or Categorization, Organization and Description o f Institutional Archive of the MMC A, institutional archive refers to all materials that are related to main activities of the museum that include exhibition, education and research. The definition is relatively inclusive, but it cannot but be inclusive since an institutional archive encompasses all the materials produced by every department of the museum. It is also potentially dangerous to limit the range of materials to be included in the institutional archive from the perspective of the present since different themes and materials gain importance in different time periods. In addition, the archive of the MMCA should include as much materials as possible because of two factors. First, the MMCA is the first national art museum of Korea as it was established in 1969. Second, the archive of the MMCA played an important role in the formulation of the art scene in Korea after the Korean War. There are four stages of collection and management of the MMCA s institutional archive. The first stage is research and collection in which archivists study dispersed materials and collect them, taking items to a temporary storage. The second stage is selection. Items are categorized by criteria such as theme, format and media. Items that do not belong to any project or duplicated ones are identif ied during the process. Damaged items or the ones that need cleaning are also processed in this stage. The third stage is description, storage and security. The purpose of the third stage is to produce descriptions of selected items and store them, which make the third stage a central task in the management of an institutional
archive. In this stage, the storage of materials is as important as producing descriptions of each item since the MMCA s archive has materials that are prone to damage, i.e. old papers, documents in large sizes, photographs, film, slides, and video tapes. The last stage of managing the institutional archive is reading and lending. The purpose of this stage is to provide services for the better usage of the archive. The MMCA Research Center puts emphasis on this last stage of collection of management of its institutional archive with regard to the fundamental purpose of collecting materials by the museum: to highlight the intrinsic specificities of materials with diverse purposes of collection and make the best use of them. Archive can also become a point of change that is beyond a mere representation, enabling a multi-dimensional approach to its content by giving multiple voices to objects of its study. At that point, MMCA Research Center overcomes itself as a passive storage of records and becomes an active space of creating meaning. With the opening of MMCA Research Center, the MMCA has established a basis to record its history and manage materials that show its identity. Since the museum was first opened in 1969 at Gyeongbokgung Palace, 44 years have passed. More than 400 exhibitions were held during the course of time, and there are many materials that are related to the exhibitions. There is a need for an effort to collect materials dispersed in different locations and ones that are being produced by the institution. MMCA Research Center will perform its legitimate role when it performs as a systematic management and analyzation of the collected materials to enable diverse applications of its archive.