The Importance of Exhibition Design

On December 13, 2014, the DOOSAN Curator Workshop invited Yongju Kim, Design Manager of the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea, as the featured guest for its eighth and final seminar. Also in attendance at the seminar was Hilguek, the design team that will assist with the exhibition design for the upcoming DOOSAN Curator Workshop co-curated exhibition.

Exhibition Design Visualizing Curating

Curators generate social discourse and pursue publicness by curating exhibitions, and at present the role of the curator has become more sharply defined, with much curatorial work becoming departmentalized due to developments in technology and media. Thus, as curators increasingly cast their focus on curating and academic study, the role of visualizing exhibitions has more frequently gone to exhibition designers. Accordingly, an exhibition designer does not merely stop at designing an exhibition space, but must further interpret the curator’s ideas and objectives to present the exhibited artworks in a manner that organically complements the exhibition’s theme. As well, the curator and the exhibition designer must continue to communicate and collaborate in order to provide each other with reciprocal creative inspiration.

The Roles and Importance of Exhibition Design

Today, exhibition design demands increasingly detailed space planning and creativity. Due to exhibition themes that transverse the boundaries of diverse fields of study and developments in technology and media, artworks are now required to become more elaborate and to represent new levels of artistic exploration. In this sense, exhibition design should facilitate diverse interpretations among visitors and lead visitors to focus on the exhibited artworks. Yongju Kim discussed the importance of exhibition design based on case studies from the NMMCA.

In the case of the exhibition Figurative Journal: Guyon Chung Archive, Kim noted that one should first understand the architect Guyon Chung before proceeding to the issue of exhibition design. Chung emphasized the importance of his concept of enlightenment whereby he created architectural structures responsive to the needs of their surrounding environments, and Kim attempted to highlight this outlook in the design of the exhibition space. In addition, Kim exhibited archived collections in order to depict architect Chung’s philosophy of “communication and exchange between generations.”  As well, utilizing the case of the exhibition Dansaekhwa: Korean Monochrome Painting, Kim presented an exhibition design utilizing the concept of a “stone wall” in Korean architecture. 
 
Yongju Kim noted the necessity of a “dynamic exhibition that can encompass diverse landscapes and expand the possibilities of communication, instead of an exhibition that does not hold one’s attention,” and emphasized exhibition design’s role in allowing viewers to encounter artworks via a number of different perspectives