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Foto: Sguastevi (Wikimedia Commons)
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Museum + Korean instruments + Wikipedia

A few years ago, Horacio Curti, a professor at the ESMUC (High School of Music of Catalonia) and a specialist in Asian music, proposed an exhibition for the Music Museum of Barcelona, with a spectacular result that we can now see (and until June 2018!). The exhibition proposes an approach to the sounds of Korea from the music through social and ritual aspects, wich not only include instruments, but also the music, its contexts, and the costumes.

This project led to a close collaboration with the National Gugak Center and, in addition, the NGC donated 22 Korean instruments to Music Museum of Barcelona. The instruments donated are sanjo gayageum, sanjo ajaeng, hyangpiri, dangpiri, sepiri, haegeum, jeongak ajaeng, soribuk, yanggeum, sogeum, danso, taepyongso, nagak, nabal, jing, jabara, yonggo, sogo, kwaenggwari, janggu, jwago and ulla. The exhibition is completed with a large and illustrated catalog of specialized articles, and with fifteen videos of high quality, with a total duration of more than an hour and a half, they feature recordings of Korean music and instrument makers, specially prepared for this exhibition.

Every time we prepare an exhibition, we analyze in parallel what content we have in Catalan Wikipedia, and what's in other languages. In a particular case, in the exhibition Musical Sculptures, we made the Wikipedia contents regarding the sculptures as a part of the texts for the exhibition. Since then, we have been collaborating with Amical Wikimedia and Catalan Wikimedians, and alow them to access the information generated by the museum, specialized bibliography from the museum library, and help Wikipedians to expand or create articles on various topics.

Jwago | Foto: Sguastevi (Wikimedia Commons)     Yonggo | Foto: Sguastevi (Wikimedia Commons)

Earlier this month, the inauguration of the Eolssigu! The sounds of Korea exhibition occurred in coincidence with Wikipedia Asian Month, on this occasion, we have photographed 31 exhibited pieces and released them to Wikimedia Commons, wich gave us a push to start a Wiki project “Museu de la Música/Corea” to create articles on Music of Korea.