East Asia in Motion

A new exhibition space has been created in the southern corridor area of the MOK. As an open presentation room connected with the China, Korea, and Japan Galleries, it concludes the visitors' round tour of the museum.

The space featuring artworks from the museum's holdings is conceived transregionally, encompassing all countries of East Asia, in regular rotation. It focuses new acquisitions of the museum. The presentation concept pursues several aims. In addition to the aspect of transregionality, contemporary East Asian art receives a permanent visible presence at the MOK in a dedicated exhibition space. As recent acquisitions, the exhibits moreover possess current relevance of individual meaning. Their scope conveys the museum's collection interests, as does their collective presentation the various forms of strategic acquisition through purchases, donations, and permanent loans. The exhibition space so not least initiates a platform to thank the private individuals, societies, foundations, and other institutions, as well as the City of Cologne, for their support and trust they have placed in the MOK in expanding its collection. All new acquisitions are to be made accessible to the public and appropriately acknowledged.

Offering maximum creative freedom, East Asia in Motion facilitates a active dialogue between objects of different eras, regions, and genres. Thematically or materially related objects come into direct encounter and exchange with one other; likewise different yet connected generations of artists. In individual cases, specimen from the museum's old collections are displayed for comparison and interaction: currently, for example, a Chinese tea bowl from the Southern Song Dynasty (1126–1279), a landscape depiction by the Taiwanese ink artist Liu Kuo-sung (*1932), and an abstract painting by the Korean minimalist Lee Ufan (*1936). Reconsiderations and reassessments of these objects are set in motion, demonstrating the dynamic nature of writing art history.

The new acquisitions sharpen the MOK's collection profile as a museum of the present, setting marks in the systematic expansion of certain areas: among these, modern and contemporary art, art from Korea, art by women as well as boundary-crossing positions of diversely informed artists with a connection to East Asia.

The presentation is curated by Dr. Shao-Lan Hertel.

Photo (detail): Hyun-Sook Song (*1952), 5 Brushstrokes (5 Pinselstriche), DL 2025,1, permanent loan from the "Friends of ART COLOGNE", © Historisches Archiv mit Rheinischen Bildarchiv, Köln/Marion Mennicken