Troupe’s head Choi Tae-ji to organize ballet-meets-gugak show for its 50th anniversary The year 2011 was a monumental one for Korea National Ballet. Its March show “Giselle” marked the ballet company’s first-ever sell-out and fueled ballet fever across the nation. Most shows during the rest of the year sold out as well, ballet-related fashion items were popular, and a TV comedy even featured bal...

“The collection holds many masterpieces, enough to establish an art museum,” said an art industry insider. The list of the Chinese artists include Chen Lianqing whose work insiders say is beyond pricing these days; Zhang Xiaogang, a representative avant-garde artist known for the “Bloodline Series”; Feng Zhengjie, a second-generation contemporary artist and Yin Zhaoyang, a veteran contemporary a...

Eight Magnum photographers touch hearts in ‘Access to Life’ project Living in the scorching sun in Haiti, Autha Adolph, 26-year-old at the time, could barely stand, talk or let alone smile due to extreme malnutrition and HIV infection. She weighed only 35 kg, her limbs bony and her digestive organs practically ruined. When she went to the hospital in November 2007, the doctors doubted that she ...

Japanese art management house Office Tomoe will release a DVD album in March, containing collaboration projects of South Korean and Japanese artists. The main presentation of the DVD is a poetic music video titled “Landscape on the Way to Sleep,” which features vast landscapes and two people who are described as sages. Tomoe Shizune, the sole Japanese composer and artist who is carrying on the ...

About 147 centimeters tall, the dress looks good enough for any average-sized women to slip into right away, although it might be a bit spiky. A signboard posted next to the work explains the types of fish bones the artist used to make the dress. The show is popular among children who are on winter vacation, especially for the side programs in which they can learn how to make cookies and muffins...

Kim changed his residence many times during his career, working in Seoul, Tokyo, Paris and New York. His style, however, remained quite consistent. The thickness of paint changed slightly ― became thicker in Paris and thinner in New York ― but his simple composition and use of pastel colors like sky blue and light purple remained the same. Choi Sun-u, late historian and former director of the Na...

Exhibitions “Dreams of Atom”: Held as a part of the “International Cartoon & Art Festival 2011/12,” the exhibition showcases about 500 original drawings, paintings and publications of Japan’s legendary cartoonist Tezuka Osamu’s work including “Astro Boy,” “Jungle Emperor Leo” and “Sapphire Prince.” Other sections of the festival display works by several Korean and Japanese artists who pay homage...

“Many Koreans may not be so familiar with the Lake Biwa district,” said Ryu Seung-jin, the Asian art curator of the museum. “But the region carries a lot of significance in Korea-Japan history, as it was the area where Buddhism was introduced by Baekje migrants, and where the official travelling routes for goodwill missions from Joseon (1392-1910), whenever they made diplomatic visits to Japan, ...

NEW ORLEANS (AP) _ In the four-block radius where he painted and drank himself into frightening stupors, Noel Rockmore was known by the denizens of the French Quarter as an outrageous Pablo Picasso-like figure who combined the mythological and the real. He produced some 15,000 oil paintings, temperas, collages and sketches over his career and then died in obscurity. His life was that of an Ameri...

The New York Times last week mentioned Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei-directed show “Unnamed” at Korea’s Gwangju Design Biennale as one of the outstanding contemporary shows held this year. In its article titled “From Apple to Occupy, the Design Honors List for 2011,” which was published on Dec. 25, Ai’s show at Gwangju was mentioned as exceptional along with the Museum of Modern Art in N...

Seven more Korean Cultural Centers will open next year, making 28 around the world, the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism said on Tuesday. The new centers are scheduled to open in Hungary, Mexico, India, Thailand, Belgium, Brazil and Egypt by the end of 2012, the ministry said in a year-end press release. The cultural centers will continue their activities of introducing and promoting Kor...