2018 University Student Future Curator Exhibition The Day Seoul Went Underwater
‘University Student Future Curator’ program, cooperative exhibition project with associated museum
Seoul Museum of History has joined with university students to open the lobby exhibition Seoul Summer Survival - The Day Seoul Went Underwater. This exhibition was made possible through the museum’s support, based on the exhibition plan practice proposals of the ‘University Student Future Curator’ program, held from July 2 to 12. The four final selected proposals, under the summer season’s topic of ‘bathing,’ highlights the summer relaxation areas of Seoul’s swimming pools and bathhouses. As a novel, refreshing exhibition depicting the daily lives of people from modern times until now living in Seoul ‘underwater,’ this will be a place for visitors to understand the ‘bathing’ that most everyone has done at least once in the summer, in a new light. In spite of this continuous summer heat wave, we hope that you can come take a break from the heat at the museum and enjoy the refreshing exhibition.
-Exhibition Contents-
Bathing - Immersing the Modern_ Pre-modernism washed with water
Bathing, which included both swimming and baths since modern times and before, was influenced by the modernization that came with the opening of port harbors and was separated into swimming, the health concept of working out one’s body, and bathing, a general step in the rules of hygiene. One of the elements of the Japanese Empire’s enlightenment was to build public bathing areas for hygiene, and also construct swimming pools to emphasize swimming as a part of physical education. Bathing and swimming, while both coming from the same concept of playing in water, went through modernization and took their own directions to become the developments they are today.
Bathing - Soaking into our Daily Lives_ Becoming leisure for daily life
Swimming and bathing, both developed by different methods through the modernization process, progressed through big changes after Korea’s restoration of independence. Swimming, recognized as both a form of exercise and a type of refinement during the Japanese Colonial Era, added to the nation’s efforts towards tourism development and started to become popular. Through the vacation boom in the 1960s and the relaxed permission standards for public baths in the 1980s, swimming and bathing became one step closer to becoming a popularized form of leisure, and has grown to earn its place as a daily compound leisure space.
Seoul’s 2018 Water Fun Scene
Bathing was the best way, and the only way, to beat the heat during times like this when there was no air conditioning. Furthermore, Seoul was always surrounded by the streams of water coming from the mountains and the Hangang River flowing around and about making its way into Seoul. At this exhibition, you will be able to admire various current and former water landscapes, including Cheonggyecheon Stream, Samcheong-dong, Ui-dong, and more. You can also meet the newly transformed places for water fun that play such an important part in our lives, public bathing houses and the Hangang River.