Pictured above: James Turrell,”Light Reignfall” (2011), Los Angeles County Museum of Art, gift of Hyundai Motor as part of The Hyundai Project: Art + Technology at LACMA in honor of the museum’s 50th anniversary. (Photo by Florian Holzherr/LACMA)
by COURTNEY LEE
The Los Angeles County Museum of Art and Hyundai Motor Company last week announced a major 10-year partnership that aims to promote global interest in Korean art and foster further development in LACMA’s Art + Technology Lab, which supports artist experiments with emerging technologies.
“The Hyundai Project,” as the partnership between the largest museum in the western U.S. and the world’s fifth-largest automaker is known, will be the “longest and largest programmatic commitment from a corporate sponsor in LACMA’s history,” according to a March 26 LACMA press release.
The deal, reported by the Los Angeles Times to be in the “millions of dollars,” will allow Hyundai to support LACMA through sponsorships in exhibitions, acquisitions and publications through 2024. As part of The Hyundai Project and to celebrate the museum’s 50th anniversary, LACMA has acquired Robert Irwin’s “Miracle Mile” and James Turrell’s “Light Reignfall.”
Both Irwin and Turrell were part of the museum’s original Art & Technology Program from 1967 to 1971 that inspired the Art + Technology Lab, which combines the two elements by matching artists with corporations. Thanks to the new partnership with Hyundai, the Lab can continue providing grants and facilitating innovative projects for artists until 2020.
The Hyundai Project will also focus on the Korean Art Scholarship Initiative, which will consist of several exhibitions and publications over the span of the partnership. The three anticipated exhibitions will showcase the history of Korean calligraphy (2018); contemporary Korean art in the U.S. (2022); and Korean art in the 20th century (2024).
Another upcoming exhibition to be sponsored by Hyundai includes “Diana Thater: The Sympathetic Imagination,” which is scheduled to run at LACMA from Nov. 22 to April 17, 2016.
Furthermore, Hyundai and LACMA are working on a website to expand the world of art to a broader audience. According to Hyundai’s press release, the website will allow users to customize and create their own print catalogs of a wide variety of works from LACMA’s collection.
This is not Hyundai’s first time partnering with a major art museum. The automaker giant has also partnered with the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Seoul and the Tate Modern in London.
“Art is a creative expression of human values that transcends age, gender, race and culture,” Euisun Chung, vice chairman of Hyundai Motor Company, said in a press release. “The Hyundai Project at LACMA seeks to support global art communities in the areas of technology and Korean art. I am confident that this collaborative partnership will realize mutual objectives and bolster a deeper understanding of people, culture, and our environment.”
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