Lotte Foundation for Arts wins top prize at Mecenat Awards
Lotte Foundation for Arts head Kim Sung-hwan, left, receives the grand prize at the 27th Mecenat Awards at The Westin Josun Seoul hotel, Tuesday. / Courtesy of Lotte Foundation for Arts
The Lotte Foundation for Arts, the cultural foundation of Lotte Group, won the grand prize at this year’s Mecenat Awards for its support of classical music and contemporary art, the foundation said Wednesday.
The foundation received the award, which comes with a presidential citation, at the 27th Mecenat Awards ceremony held Tuesday at The Westin Josun Seoul hotel. “Mecenat” is a French term for corporate patronage of the arts. The Korea Mecenat Association has hosted the awards since 1999 to honor companies and business leaders who have contributed to the development of culture and the arts in Korea.
Lotte Group Chairman Shin Dong-bin founded the foundation in 2015. It started with 20 billion won ($14.7 million), half from his personal funds and half from three Lotte affiliates. Lotte says it has invested about 200 billion won in arts support since then.
The foundation runs Lotte Concert Hall and Lotte Museum of Art, both in the Lotte World Tower complex in Songpa District, southern Seoul. It is the only foundation set up by a Korean company that operates both a concert hall with more than 2,000 seats and an art museum, according to the foundation.
Lotte Concert Hall opened in 2016 as Korea’s first vineyard-style hall, in which the seats surround the stage. It also has the country’s largest concert hall pipe organ, with some 5,000 pipes. The hall has hosted more than 3,000 performances and drawn about 3 million visitors. Lotte Museum of Art opened in 2018 and has since held 20 special exhibitions that drew some 800,000 visitors.
The foundation also hosts the Korea International Organ Competition, supports arts groups for people with disabilities and funds arts education for children from low-income families.
“I believe that hearing an orchestra for the first time in a concert hall or lingering in front of a work of art in a gallery makes a person’s daily life a little richer,” the foundation’s chairman said at the ceremony.
This article was published with the assistance of generative AI and edited by The Korea Times.