ARKO Art Center
About Arko Art Center
ARKO Art Center was founded in 1974 as Misulhoegwan in a building of former Doeksu Hospital in Gwanhun-dong, Jongro to offer much-needed exhibition space for artists and arts groups. In 1979, Misulhoegwan moved to its present building, designed by preeminent Korean architect Kim Swoo-geun (1931-1986) and located in Marronnier Park, the former site of Seoul National University. The two neighboring brick buildings accommodating ARKO Art Center and ARKO Arts Theater are the major landmarks of the district of Daehakro.
As more public and private museums and commercial galleries came into the art scene in the 1990s, Misulhoegwan shifted to curating and presenting its own exhibitions. Renamed as Marronnier Art Center in 2002, ARKO Art Center assumed a full-fledged art museum system and played an increasingly prominent role as a public arts organization leading the contemporary art paradigm. When The Korea Culture and Arts Foundation was reborn as Arts Council Korea, a public-private partnership organization, Marronnier Art Center became ARKO Art Center named after the abbreviation for Arts Council Korea in 2005.
Insa Art Space has opened in 2000 and supported emerging artists and curators in their creative practices and exhibitions within the broader context of contemporary art in Korea.
Celebrating its 20th anniversary, Insa Art Space launched new programs such as IAS Studio, which supports interdisciplinary art and workshops for rising curators and artists.
Reflecting the new values and strategy of usefulness, inclusivity, collaboratively, commonality, ARKO Art Center and Insa Art Space are committed to working as a platform where research, production, exhibitions and the free exchange of creative activities grow and develop in harmony in addition to having a diversity of programs from thematic exhibitions addressing social subjects, public programs widely promoting various discourses in art.