Idea Museum: In the Middle Voice

Leeum Museum of Art presents the third edition of its multi-year public initiative, the Idea Museum In the Middle Voice, supported by the CHANEL Culture Fund, from November 25, 2025 to July 31, 2026.

Inspired by anthropologist Tim Ingold, In the Middle Voice explores new modes of learning that take shape through our relations with things, nature, and the world—where perception and understanding deepen through such encounters.

Ingold proposes the “middle voice” as a way of describing relational movements that exceed the binary of active and passive. From this perspective, knowledge does not flow in a single direction; it emerges through reciprocal processes that transform all involved. The program brings this idea into the museum’s educational context, developing it through five movements—Making, Dancing, Improvising, Voicing, and Listening.

“With In the Middle Voice, we continue to consider how the museum can serve as a dynamic field of knowledge, encouraging participants to discover the many connections among art, learning, and the relational world we share,” says Helen Jungyeon Ku, Head of Research and Public Programs at Leeum Museum of Art. “Rather than understanding learning as transmission, this edition reimagines it as an active process of making, moving, and sensing together.”

The program opens with a keynote lecture by Tim Ingold, who will reconsider the nature of perception and learning beyond the divide between teacher and student, attending to moments of encounter, friction, and emergence within relationships.

Building upon the keynote, a series of workshops—Earth, Plant, and Air—led by Ingold, will take place both indoors and outdoors. Participants will engage in tactile and sensory encounters with natural elements, exploring the ecological, social, and cultural meanings embedded in material and movement. These workshops are developed in collaboration with artist Juree Kim, Jikcheon-ri Straw Craft Village in Paju, and master kite maker Roe Soon, president of the Korean Folk Kite Preservation Society.

Following the opening session “Making,” In the Middle Voice continues through four thematic chapters, presented through lectures, workshops, and performances until July 31, 2026. Contributors include choreographer Eun-Mi Ahn; cellist, improviser, and composer Okkyung Lee; improvising singer Phil Minton; and Listening Academy.

All programs are free with advance registration through the Leeum Museum of Art website.

Supported by the CHANEL Culture Fund, the Idea Museum continues to champion its core values of Inclusivity, Diversity, Equality, and Access, using artistic imagination to engage with the pressing questions of our time.

Press contact: Minsun Park (Communication Team minsunn.park@samsung.com)