Prize-winning architectural design for the National Museum of Contemporary Art’s new annex building in Seoul (Photo courtesy of the National Museum of Contemporary Art)

On May 3, the National Museum of Contemporary Art hosted a press conference at the briefing room of the Culture Ministry to present current progress on its Seoul annex construction, along with information on upcoming exhibitions and measures for museum collection maintenance and storage security.
 
  During the press meeting, Park Young-dae, chairman of planning and management commission at the museum, announced that the bill on Seoul annex construction passed on April 21. The Museum of Contemporary Art has been through months of deliberations with the Cultural Heritage Administration of Korea, Seoul Metropolitan Government and Jongno-gu Office.

The annex building is scheduled for completion by the end of 2012 and will open in 2013. The new museum will have exhibition spaces designed for different kinds of media and multidisciplinary art facilities, including a movie theater, multimedia archive rooms and media labs.

According to Chairman Park, the National Museum of Contemporary Art will form an advisory committee in May and collect opinions from experts and hands-on workers to discuss future outlooks and set up space usage and program agendas. The museum also announced that it will enhance the storage security through digitalizing its archives system.

Presentations on upcoming exhibitions followed. An exhibition focusing on American contemporary art will run from June 11 at its Deoksugung Palace Annex, the first time the Whitney Collection will be featured in Asia. July is reserved for French contemporary art and August will be dedicated to NMoCA’s artists of the year from 1995 to 2010, celebrating its 15 years of history.

Artworks by Lee Ufan (left) and Newell Harry (right) at “Tell Me Tell Me: Korean and Australian Art 1976-2011” (Photo courtesy of the National Museum of Contemporary Art)

In October, the National Museum’s Deoksugung Palace Annex will become the venue for an interesting collaborative project conducted in partnership with Seoul Olympic Museum of Art (SOMA) and Arko Art Center, titled “Annoyance.” Another major exhibition that involves cultural exchanges “Tell Me Tell Me: Korean and Australian Art 1976-2011” will travel to the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Gwacheon this November. The show to celebrate the Korean-Australian year of friendship is set to kick off a 3-month run at The Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney, in June.

Photographs from the “Long Term Photography Archive” project by Back Seung-woo (left) and Noh Suntag (right) (Photo courtesy of the National Museum of Contemporary Art)

Meanwhile, the National Museum of Contemporary Art has unveiled a selection of images by Noh Suntag and Back Seung-woo from the museum’s “Long Term Photography Archive” project. The project aims at collating and archiving photographs of the former military facility’s demolition to make way for the construction process of the new museum building.

For more information, please visit the official website at: www.moca.go.kr/engN (Korean and English).

By Hwang Dana
Korea.net Staff Writer

[Source: Korea.net]