The National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea, said Wednesday it will open “Still, the Days We Tried” on April 17 at the MMCA Children’s Space on the second floor of the education wing at its Seoul museum.
The MMCA Children’s Space is a family-focused area first introduced at the Seoul museum in 2025 to broaden children’s and family visitors’ museum experiences through participatory exhibitions and education grounded in contemporary art.
The exhibition is presented with artist Yang Jung-uk, the 2024 winner of the museum’s flagship award, Artist of the Year. It features three new works and includes ongoing hands-on workshops designed to help visitors engage with the exhibition’s themes. The title reflects the idea that failure and repetition in the act of trying can lead to new attempts. The museum said the program is intended to help children experience experimentation in the creative process and view failure as a new possibility.
Yang will show three new works: “Temporary Map” (2026), “A Small Person and an Even Smaller Person” (2026) and “Watching You” (2026). The museum said the works build on the artist’s view that it can be enough even without explicitly showing something, underscoring that the process itself has meaning. Children can look closely at the works to observe movement and structure and explore how they operate and what they mean.
Three always-available workshops linked to the works will offer children a chance to make, try and learn through a range of materials and activities. The artist said he hopes children will focus on attitude and process rather than achievement and results. The museum said the programs can help children build self-efficacy and develop a more positive view of failure by experiencing the artist’s working methods and creative process.
Related education programs will also run during the exhibition, including the regular “Museum Kids TokTok” for preschool and elementary school groups and the weekend “Museum Family TokTok” for families with children. Details are available on the MMCA website.
Separately, the museum said it has traditionally closed only three days a year — Jan. 1 and the day of Lunar New Year and Chuseok — but will begin a pilot program in 2026 to add temporary closures for safety inspections as visitor numbers rise. It will close on the first Tuesday of June, September and December (6.2., 9.1., 12.1.).
* This article has been translated by AI.
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