第五届亚洲美术馆馆长论坛各国馆长发言内容
国外馆：
Bae Soon-hoon 韩国 韩国国立现代美术馆馆长
发言提纲：《Facilitating Artists-in-Residency Interchanges in Asia:The Role of Art Museums》
随从Hyo-Joon Choi发言， Hyo-Joon Choi： Head of Art Studio, National Museum of Contemporary Art, Korea
The National Museum of Contemporary Art, Korea, has established two National Art Studios in 2002 and 2004. Beginning in 2005, the museum launched an international exchange program that sponsors residency opportunities in collaboration with some of the world’s most renowned residency programs and art studios. Through the Asian Pacific Artists Fellowship Program, the museum has been selecting candidates through a global competitive selection process, offering opportunities, to serve as residents, to international artists from countries throughout Asia and Oceania.
With a view to stimulate international exchanges among art studios, the Artists-in-Residency program has been offering artists two to three months of residency opportunities in art studios, some financial assistance in the form of monthly grants and assistance in the organization of exhibitions upon their return. This program which began in 2005, offers opportunities in art studios that are formal members of residency associations around the world including Res Artis and Alliance of Artists' Communities. The number of exchange partners of our museum, as of September 2010, stands at 12 organizations in 9 countries that includes Vis-a-vis Lab based in Beijing, the Shenzhen Fine Art Institute based in Shenzhen, China and the Sculpture Square based in Singapore, among numerous others.
The Fellowship Program for Asian Artists that began in the same year has also been operating an active program that identifies and selects talented new artists through collaboration with national or public organizations in the field of arts and culture in the Asian region, five of the most active partner countries among which are China, Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia and Thailand. The museum has invited artists from 14 other partner countries to interact with the artist community in Korea to date, including Singapore, India, Vietnam, Iran, Mongolia, Turkey, Nepal, Bangladesh and Taiwan.
It was this program which was expanded in scope in 2008 and renamed the Asian Pacific Artists Fellowship Program, to extend eligibility to the artists from all 67 countries in Asia and Oceania. To date, the museum has sponsored artists from Japan, Thailand, Taiwan, Pakistan, Vietnam, Sri Lanka, Singapore, Australia, the Philippines and India, among others, through a competitive selection process.
The National Art Studio Team of the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Korea, is currently planning on hosting a forum tentatively called the “Asian Visual Arts Creative Assistance Forum.”(tentatively entitled) The purpose of this forum, which has yet to be finalized, is to provide a platform for conceptual and operational exchanges of input for an international collaborative network to promote the formulation of policies to support various art works and projects. The list of participating countries will most likely be consistent with those countries taking part in this gathering of museums directors in Asia.
There are ways in which the public as well as the private art museums and galleries in our region can seek to benefit from the synergic interactions and partnerships among each other, without being directly involved in the operation of artist-in-residency programs. Art museums can benefit from creative studios (i.e. residencies) that function as incubators in terms of identifying highly talented artists. These creative studios, or residencies, on the other hand, can function, through their exhibitions and collection programs, to introduce talented artists into the public realm. It is in this vein that I believe artists-in-residency programs will allow modern day art museums to continue to function as contemporary art museums while also achieving their management objectives (first subtopic of our discussion).
I am pleased to state that an exhibition entitled Realism in Asian Art co-organized by the Singapore Art Museum and the National Museum of Contemporary Art, Korea is currently being enthusiastically received by the public. Encouraged by this response, we are also planning an ambitious exhibition entitled The Pop Arts of China, Japan and Korea scheduled for the second half of this year. The benefits of these interchanges among Asian countries are ostensible judging from the public response manifested in the form of raised public confidence and a clearer sense of identity. In this respect, I believe it is our vital mission to allow Asian artworks to be freed from the shadows of Western art by elucidating a sense of identity in our respective art and ultimately enhance the quality of the lives of our peoples through art.
I also strongly believe in our effort to discover young talented artists, it will be in the best interest of our countries in Asia to choose the path of a win-win strategy through synergetic growth, as opposed to competing against each other while trying to progress individually. In this regard, I believe that the most effective means of exchange is to have our artists, critics, exhibition organizers and partners from the neighboring disciplines to mingle and spend time together in the same physical space. In an era which is characterized by the people’s preference of “global nomadism,” I am confident that we can achieve this objective by promoting artist residency exchanges among countries. In this regard, I would like to conclude by urging everyone here to take the initiative and engage in country-to-country artist residency exchange programs by either direct operation or by forging partnerships to promote active residency exchanges among each other.
Thank you.
