From Go Hui-dong to Lee Ufan... Five-Year Joint Research on Korea-Japan Art Exchange Materials

National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art and Tokyo Cultural Heritage Research Institute Sign MOU for Archival Research through 2030
Digitizing and Translating Japanese Art Materials for Public Access
International Academic Conference to Be

The National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMCA) is embarking on a five-year joint research project with the Tokyo Research Institute for Cultural Properties to excavate Korean modern and contemporary art materials preserved in Japan and to systematically document the history of art exchange between Korea and Japan.

Exhibition prints and photographic and documentary materials related to modern and contemporary art held by the Tokyo Research Institute for Cultural Properties, Japan. National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art

On August 3, the MMCA Art Research Center announced that it had signed a business agreement with the Tokyo Research Institute for Cultural Properties to pursue activities from 2026 to 2030. These will include the investigation and digitalization of collections, international symposiums, and academic publications. The agreement between both institutions was signed on July 7.

The Tokyo Research Institute for Cultural Properties holds a large collection of relevant materials, such as exhibition prints, documents, photographs, and bulletins relating to Korean artists who studied or worked in Japan. These materials include records on Koh Heedong, Korea’s first Western-style painter, as well as Lee In-sung, Lee Jung-seop, Yoo Youngkuk, Nam June Paik, Lee Ufan, Park Seo-bo, and others.

The MMCA considers these materials as essential resources for research, as they illuminate the artists’ activities in Japan, the process of creating and distributing their works, and the socio-cultural context of the period. These also help to study the influence between the Japanese and Korean art worlds. After investigating and cataloging the major materials, the MMCA plans to digitally scan and translate them into Korean before making them available to domestic researchers and the general public.

The initial investigation will take place from August through November this year. An MMCA researcher will be dispatched to the Tokyo Research Institute for Cultural Properties to examine materials related to Korean artists who studied or worked in Japan during the 1920s and 1930s. The results of the investigation will be organized into digital data and made searchable on the MMCA’s official website.

A 1942 leaflet of the '10th Anniversary Exhibition of Lee In-sung's Works Catalogue' held by the Kyo Cultural Heritage Research Institute. It contains a photo of Lee In-sung, a list of exhibited works, and advertisements for sewing machines at the time. National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art

In 2027, the scope of research will expand to include Korean artists and works active in Japan from the 1940s to the 1980s and 1990s. In 2028, an international academic conference will be held to review the results of the three-year study, and in 2030, a comprehensive research publication encompassing the five-year art archive will be published.

The Tokyo Research Institute for Cultural Properties is a national research institute under Japan’s Agency for Cultural Affairs, established in 1930 based on the legacy of Japanese Western-style painter Kuroda Seiki. It holds literature, photographs, and exhibition materials related to modern and contemporary Japanese art and cultural properties.

The MMCA Art Research Center, which opened in 2013, is the largest art archive in Korea, holding approximately 520,000 materials related to Korean and Asian modern and contemporary art.

Kim Seong-hee, Director of the MMCA, stated, "We hope that this agreement will shed new light on Korean art materials and lay a solid foundation for research on the history of Korea-Japan art exchange."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.