SEOUL (UCAN): “The establishment of the Catholic Academy of Arts will be a major milestone in the pastoral ministry,” Father Father Mattias Heo Young-yup, public relations committee president of the Archdiocese of Seoul, said. The academy, planned as a non-profit organisation, is scheduled to launch on November 29, the first Sunday of Advent.
The project plans to collect arts and artifacts within the archdiocese and other parts of the country for their maintenance, conservation and study.
The academy plans to have an education headed centre by Father Heo who added that Father Simon Jee Young-hyun, director of the Seoul Catholic Artists Association, and other senior priests are also part of the project.
He said works to preserve Church arts and studies about them have been ongoing. The academy was set up following demands from Catholics for the conservation and management of artworks, the priest explained.
“Many of the dilapidated artifacts are preserved by using scientific methods,” he said, adding that the archdiocese also plans a museum as part of the project to showcase local Catholic history through arts.
The project will help the “scattered artworks to be brought together under one roof and arrange them in a more systematic, objective and professional way,” Father Aemillius Chung Woong-mo, who is associated with the project, explained.
Art lectures and seminars, suspended because of the Covid-19 coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic, will be resumed under the academy’s banner. These lectures will be conducted online, Church officials said.
