Hyundai Card and the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York announced that they will work together on various projects to discover talented Korean artists and curators and expand their global opportunities, as well as shed light on and promote the history of Korean contemporary art on April 9.

First, the two will focus on the ‘Curator Exchange Program,’ which will support talented Korean artists and curators to expand their global reach. MoMA curators will stay in Korea to discover promising Korean artists and research Korean contemporary art, while Hyundai Card and MoMA will select Korean curators and send them to MoMA to participate in exhibition planning and conduct research on MoMA’s collection.

This year, MoMA curators from six departments – Architecture & Design, Drawing & Prints, Film, Media & Performance, Painting & Sculpture, and Photography – will be in Korea to conduct research. “We will activate the exchange program to support Korean artists who have had difficulty making a name for themselves in the global art world despite their high artistic quality and work, and to help Korean curators expand their global network,” said a representative from Hyundai Card.

In June, Hyundai and MoMA will co-present “Hyundai Card First Look,” a curated exhibition program that showcases a wide range of works from MoMA’s collection, including architecture, painting, design, film, photography, and sculpture, and will be available in New York as well as on MoMA’s website and Hyundai Card DIVE. The exhibitions will also be curated by Korean curators who will be traveling to MoMA in the future, and will also be on display at Hyundai Card’s storage facility in Itaewon, Seoul. The first exhibition in June will feature works by Korean geometric abstract artist Seungjio Lee and American performance artist Martine Gutierrez. 

In addition, Hyundai Card and MoMA will collaborate on the production of the Korean edition of MoMA’s research book series on modern and contemporary art, ‘Primary Documents.’ Hyundai Card will support the research and publication process, as well as the documentation of Korean modern and contemporary art.

In addition, Hyundai Card will exclusively sponsor a media art exhibition titled “The Hyundai Card Digital Wall,” which will be displayed on the Digital Wall in MoMA’s main lobby. Hyundai Card previously sponsored Refik Anadol’s NFT artwork Unsupervised, which was the first artwork featured on the Digital Wall last year.

Hyundai Card has been partnering with MoMA for over 20 years, since 2006, and has collaborated in various fields. Hyundai Card and MoMA have been introducing overseas exhibitions to Korean audiences that were previously only available in famous museums overseas, and have received positive responses. They have gone a step further than exhibition collaboration, and have also worked together to select books for the Hyundai Card Design Library and Art Library.

Hyundai Card has also contributed to the art world by being the sole sponsor of more than 50 major exhibitions at MoMA. In addition to the exhibition “Handles (2019)” by well-known Korean installation artist Haegue Yang and “Temper Clay (2021)” by media artist Sung Hwan Kim, Hyundai Card has sponsored all exhibitions at the Marie-Jose´e and Henry Kravis Studio, a new space dedicated to media and performance art, under the name “The Hyundai Card Performance Series,” including the exhibition of minimalist pioneer Donald Judd at MoMA in 2019.

Glenn D. Lowry, director of MoMA, said, “For the past 20 years, Hyundai Card has been an indispensable and major partner of MoMA. We are grateful for their longstanding support and are thrilled to expand our collaboration to connect even more people around the world with contemporary art.”

Chung Tae-young, vice chairman of Hyundai Card, said “Hyundai Card has been committed to contributing to the art world based on our long-standing trust and partnership with MoMA,” and “We will continue to work closely with MoMA to help the Korean art world grow and develop.”

References

• 현대카드 보도자료 (Hyundai Card Press Release)
  
• 뉴욕현대미술관 (Museum of Modern Art, New York, MoMA)