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A Model of Culture Network
Gana Art Center
Gana Art Center is surrounded by the magnificent features and the fresh verdures of Buk-han mountain. It neighbors to the high-class residential quarter quiet and agreeable. There are two universities in which take ten minutes to get to on foot from the art center. The art center is located in Jong-no Gu, the heart of Seoul, but the art center avoids the noise of the crowded downtown and the keen city life.
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Inside of Gna Art Center | Such natural surroundings as these may be expected to give citizens the comfortable rest. The educational surroundings, at first glance, excite the expectation of the study on arts and sciences. The residences make me to suspect a capacity to create the various demands.
Gana Art Center established in 1998 begun as a small gallery named Gana Art Gallery in 1983. Gana has maintained cultural enterprises on a large scale since the beginning. The Center has opened an outdoor sculpture park at the Shilla hotel and Gana Print Studio. It has also published an art magazine called GANA, as well as having opened the Gana Beaubourg Gallery, Paris, and has established the Gana Art Institute etc. The history of the enterprises have been propelled and developed. This is dependent on Gana’s belief in the construction of a cultural network realized by art.
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The magnificent waves forced Korean industrial structure to regulate and reform in the mid 1990s. At that time, Gana faced up to the needs of developing positive cultural programs in order to recover the cultural self-respect. Gana recognized that the programs are requested in the conversion from the industrial society into an information-oriented society. On the basis of this idea, Gana put spurs to expand the international interchange and a multi cultural space. Gana Art Center has been on the home of such activities and leaps. The art center established the Seoul Auction House 1999, and opened the In-sa Art Center 2000. When Gana’s neighborhoods watched these actions, they were anxious about a charge that a private organization of art would be born to have to make profit. But now, Gana is called as an example making the various spectators and actualizing the culture enterprise positive turning a misfortune into a blessing.
The enterprise fields that the Gana Art Center manages are briefly summarized in four parts: exhibition, publishing, art trade, and educational programs. The exhibitions the art center projects are continuously applied in the various places connected with Gana: the three gallery halls in the art center, Peong-chang Dong; In-sa Art Center and Gana Art Space in In-sa Dong; Forum Space in Seoul Auction House, Peong-chang Dong, and Gana Beaubourg Gallery established in 1995, Paris. Moreover the exhibitions and art shows projected by Gana Art Center are held in the art shops that Gana manages. Works by the modern masters from overseas have been invited and displayed in the gallery halls of the Gana Art Center’s since the establishment of the center: Antoni Tapies, Sam Francis, Jasper Johns, etc. The art center has played an important part in introducing the information about the heart of contemporary art and encourages the Korean art world through the exhibitions. The art center has tried somewhat to illuminate simultaneously the past and the present of Korean art. This is composed between the retrospectives of Korean early modern masters such as Chang wook-jin, Lee Ung-no, Ha In-doo, etc. by those who have been influential and by the shows of the present prominent artists as Ko Young-hoon, Kim Byung-jong, Kim Hong-soo, etc.
These shows have been planned and executed by the professionally educated staff. All of the processes and the results of the shows have been matured to varieties of academic information by curators. The Gana Art Center has published an art journal, catalogs and separate volumes. The catalogs and books published from the art center are recognized as a document about the artistic experiment in the shows and a kind of academic result from the experiment. This evaluation at present seems to be derived from what Gana has published a periodical. The experience of the information management makes a system possible to communicate immediately with spectators.
The Gana Art Center runs Seoul Auction House, the first art auction model in Korea. The auction may be an epoch-making method for the distribution of art in respect to the maximized enjoyment and to create a large number of spectators. A private gallery is mentioned as a retail trade, on the other side an art auction as a provider not only for the personal beholder but also for the gallery. The art auction, above all, offers equal opportunity of the clear trade to anyone who enjoys art and it helps the economics of the artists. These are closely related to the series project for Gana Art Center has tried to interconnect between the artist and the beholder.
There is an Academy Hall in the art center. Academic events such as seminars, lectures, symposiums are held all the year round in the hall. Most of the academic events are composed of programs linked to the exhibitions held in the art center. The programs include professional lectures dealing with the certain subjects. Liberal arts lectures for the general spectators in order to satisfy the desire of art and help their understanding of art. And the art education of children is included in them. It is notable that the educational programs of the Gana Art Center focus on the work of the present exhibitions.
The characteristic activities of the Gana Art Center may be summarized as this: The exhibition project illuminating at once between the past and the present and introducing art from afar, publishing, communicating information directly, and the educational programs making field work positive. Every area of art business in the art center is connected and is lived by the spectators. As result, the activities mention that Gana Art Center’s vision of the cultural network is cented wholly on the spectator. You, been there, will be a main subject creating the activity to them.
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