Museum Director To Korean Curators Conference

Media Release

August 2007

Whangarei Art Museum director Scott Pothan has been invited as the New Zealand representative at the Curators Conference on Contemporary Korean Art Seoul by the Korea Foundation, which supports around 20 curators from the major museums throughout the world to attend an intensive programme of lectures and site visits within South Korea from 4th – 12th October 2007. Other institutions attending include the British Museum, Victoria & Albert Museum, Los Angeles County Museum and the Peabody Museum among many others from Europe the Americas and Asia.

As well as the funding of the conference attendance by the Korea Foundation, the Asia new Zealand Foundation is supporting the director’s travel with an Asia NZ Foundation Cultural Grant. The art museum has previously been the recipient of the Asia NZ Foundation/Museums Aotearoa Award in 2001 and again in 2006.

The Award was set up in 2000 to help foster and develop better understanding between New Zealand museums and galleries and their Asian counterparts. It encourages the exchange of information and people and creates opportunities for New Zealand institutions to exhibit in Asia or to enhance the content of their own work.

In August 2005 the museum director received a travel grant of two thousand seven hundred dollars from the Asia NZ Foundation, to travel to Korea at the invitation of the Korea Foundation and attended the official presidential opening of the new multi-million dollar National Museum of Korea. The art museum had previously won this award in 2001 and developed and toured the exhibition Marginal Space from Whangarei to Auckland and Wellington.

Director of the Whangarei Art Museum, Scott Pothan, said that since the inception of the Museum 12 years ago, he had maintained a vision which allowed the extension of boundaries of understanding to go beyond Northland towards the Pacific Rim and more recently into Asia.

“The Northland peninsula is New Zealand’s outstretched arm in to the Pacific and Asia and allows us to fulfil our Mission Statement to showcase the visual arts history of our region with a focus on our place in the Pacific Rim, Asia and our bi-cultural heritage”

The Asia New Zealand Foundation was established to build New Zealand’s links with Asia and help New Zealanders develop the necessary skills to work effectively with their Asian counterparts. Its programs focus on culture and media, business and education.

ENDS

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