Busan Museum of Art Reopens After Renovation, Four Special Exhibitions Launch Simultaneously [fn Art Snap]

[Financial News] The Busan Museum of Art will reopen after approximately two years of renovation. Four special exhibitions will also open simultaneously, covering the future of the museum, memories of liberation and the war, and children’s play and sensory experiences.
According to the Busan Museum of Art on the 17th, the newly renovated facilities and special reopening exhibitions will be open to the public from 10 a.m. that day. The reopening ceremony will be held at 5 p.m. in the museum’s first-floor lobby.■ Exhibition halls and storage facilities renovated; more spaces for restA total project budget of approximately 46.9 billion won was invested in the renovation. The museum installed temperature- and humidity-control systems, integrated the third-floor exhibition halls, and expanded its storage facilities to strengthen the preservation infrastructure for its collection and archival materials.
The main entrance was relocated, and the outdoor sculpture park was also redesigned. Visitor amenities, including a café, were expanded, while the exhibition halls, children’s gallery, rest areas and sculpture park were connected vertically and horizontally for more flexible use.
The project improved both the environment for storing artworks and the spaces where visitors spend time. While upgraded conservation facilities support exhibitions, the connections among the rest areas and park broaden how visitors can use the museum before and after viewing the exhibitions.
Since opening in 1998, the museum had held approximately 330 exhibitions and operated educational programs, lectures and performances through 2023. With the reopening, it plans to expand its role as a space for exploring the relationships among citizens and society, and between technology and nature.
Busan Mayor Chun Jae-soo said, "We will carefully cultivate the museum into a place citizens want to visit often so they can enjoy art up close, and a place they would want to recommend to someone by saying, ‘Let’s go together.’"
■ Four special exhibitions spanning the future and historyThe international exhibition ‘Future Museology’ explores the museum’s social role in collaboration with a consortium of nine museums in Korea and abroad. It examines how the functions of collecting and exhibiting artworks can expand through relationships with society. More than 20 artists are participating, and the exhibition will run in Exhibition Room 1 on the third floor through March 14 next year.
‘Still We are Borne on These Waves: 1945-1953’ examines society from immediately after liberation through the period surrounding the Korean War through art. The exhibition brings together approximately 260 artworks and 460 archival materials from the museum’s collection, major museums and art museums across Korea, artists and their bereaved families, and private collectors.
It presents the perspectives of artists who lived through that period alongside interpretations by contemporary artists. Materials from art exhibitions held in Busan during the liberation period will also be shown, introducing the activities of Busan’s first-generation painters. The exhibition will continue through February 14 next year.
‘To All These Museums of Yesterday’ looks back at how the museum’s spaces and meaning have changed, based on institutional and architectural records accumulated from its opening through its reopening. The exhibition examines the museum’s relationship with Busan’s art ecosystem through its collection resources and will be held in the project gallery on the second floor through March 14 next year.
As the new facilities are unveiled, traces of the former spaces and operations have also become part of the exhibition. The presentation invites visitors to read the museum’s transformation not only through the building’s exterior and equipment, but also through the time accumulated within it and its relationship with local art.
‘Safe Base’ in the children’s gallery on the first basement level was designed around attachment theory to help children experience the museum as a familiar space. Nameless Architecture and Bang&Ri participated, using a range of genres including architecture, installation, video, artificial intelligence (AI) and interactive media.
Through play and sensory experiences, the exhibition is designed to help children discover and express their own emotions and senses. It will run through May 30 next year.

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