Institutional cross-pollination continues apace on the Bowery. In a move that marries corporate patronage with global outreach, the New Museum has announced a multi-year partnership with the South Korean automaker Hyundai and the Ulsan Art Museum.
The initiative, billed by the corporate sponsor as the Hyundai Translocal Series, officially launches this September with a new video commission by the Singaporean artist Ho Tzu Nyen. The work will premiere simultaneously in New York and Ulsan. Here in Manhattan, it will occupy a highly unconventional, site-specific footprint: the glass-front elevators of the New Museum’s recent OMA-designed expansion. It is a kinetic, inherently transient viewing space that seems perfectly suited to Mr. Ho, whose multimedia practice frequently interrogates the unstable transmission of history and myth across Southeast Asia.
In a joint statement, Regan Grusy, the acting director of the New Museum, and Changsub Lim, the director of the Ulsan Art Museum, noted that the collaboration is designed to transcend physical distance, allowing the two cities to share their unique cultural fabrics while examining the friction between local realities and the global contemporary art circuit.
This commission arrives during a particularly visible season for Mr. Ho. Already a fixture in the permanent collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Guggenheim, and the Tate Modern, he is also serving as the artistic director for the 16th Gwangju Biennale, which opens concurrently this September. Further details on his elevator-bound New Museum installation are expected in the coming months, but one thing is certain: museumgoers will soon have a much more visually arresting ride between floors.