Responding to the unrelenting pandemic which has significantly restricted exhibitions and other museum activities, three art museums have come together to form Kind Neighbors. It is an online-based project via website (www.kindneighbors.art), opening on Saturday, August 28, 2021. This project explores and experiments together on alternative museological practices in a time of social transition. Participating museums are Arko Art Center, Art Sonje Center and Nam June Paik Art Center (in alphabetical order). Established between the 1970s to the 2000s, each institution runs with different characters and contexts. Reflecting on the role of institutional museums in the midst of the social crisis and polarization caused by the pandemic, these institutions advocate the need for solidarity and communality in the public domain, and organize a series of programs such as talks, readings and performances by jointly investing their resources. This is part of the endeavors to find a way to restore the value of diversity amid the economic and social imbalances, prevailing tensions and demarcations, all exposed and exacerbated by the pandemic. For the next three months, the three art museums will become close neighbors to one another, and also invite various people from both inside and outside the art world as their new neighbors. Through the website – an online station and the commons – you are more than welcome to join us.
Project
Kind Neighbors