New Museum and Ulsan Art Museum Launch Hyundai Translocal Partnership With Ho Tzu Nyen Commission
A museum in Manhattan and one on Korea’s southern coast are joining forces through a new commission that will unfold in two cities at once. The New Museum and Ulsan Art Museum announced a multi-year partnership today as part of the Hyundai Translocal Series, beginning with a work by Singaporean multimedia artist and writer Ho Tzu Nyen (b. 1976).
The commission will be installed in the New Museum’s glass elevators, part of the institution’s recently completed OMA redesign, and in Ulsan, a coastal city north of Busan. The project extends a collaboration model that is meant to link institutions across geography while keeping each site rooted in its own local context.
Ho is among Singapore’s most prominent living artists. He represented the city-state at the 2011 Venice Biennale with *The Cloud of Unknowing*, a multi-channel video installation that braided South and Southeast Asian mythologies and histories with Western cultural references. His work often carries a deliberate sense of unease, moving between animation, film, performance, and writing.
In 2024, Ho received the Chanel Next Prize and was the subject of a mid-career survey at the Singapore Art Museum, which gathered two decades of work. That range makes him a fitting choice for a project built around translation, distance, and shared experience.
Regan Grusy, acting director of the New Museum, and Changsub Lim, director of the Ulsan Art Museum, said in a joint statement that the partnership will allow the institutions to “transcend physical distances” and explore “the push and pull of the global and the local in contemporary art.” They added that the collaboration is intended to serve as a bridge between the two cities and their art communities.
Launched in 2025, the Hyundai Translocal Series is a 10-year initiative by Hyundai Motor Company designed to connect art institutions through joint commissions, residency programs, and touring exhibitions. Its growing network already includes Korea’s Cheongju Craft Biennale, the Abu Dhabi Music & Arts Foundation, and Whitworth in the UK.
For the New Museum, the project arrives at a moment when its new building is already reshaping how visitors move through the institution. For Ulsan, it offers a parallel platform on the other side of the Pacific. The result is less a simple exchange than a shared artwork built around proximity, even at a distance.
