The Coreana Museum of Art *c-lab is a newly conceived annual project, which seeks to provide a platform where creators, curators, theorists, and researchers in the field of arts and culture conduct research and projects, exploring its annual theme. For the past ten years, the museum has continuously communicated with other genres by discussing critical issues in contemporary art through its diverse exhibitions. From 2017, the museum will approach themes from a long-term perspective and explore possibilities of art through the *c-lab, an interdisciplinary project that encompasses research, exhibitions, education, and archiving on visual art and culture.

“Beauty” has been a concept and value long explored since the beginning of mankind. The pursuit of beauty, which has stimulated human’s fundamental desires, existed in society through various forms, and it is evolving more and more today. When we look into the realm of contemporary art, however, discussing “beauty” seems rather outdated. The Coreana Museum of Art begins the 2017 *c-lab 1.0 with a distance toward the familiar theme, “beauty.” The fearful yet the uncanny: opening with what feels like a cliché. This may require a considerable amount of courage. What kind of story can we tell about beauty? What can “beauty” convey in contemporary culture? The Coreana Museum of Art launches the annual project *c-lab 1.0 to provide a platform where one can contemplate on and research diverse ways of practice regarding the theme of “beauty.”