The year 2023 was indeed “the moment” for art enthusiasts in Korea, as evidenced by the record attendance alone.A whopping 4 million visitors headed to the National Museum of Korea — the largest-ever figure witnessed in the institution’s history. Blockbuster exhibitions for Edward Hopper at the Seoul Museum of Art and Maurizio Cattelan at the Leeum Museum of Art drew nearly 600,000 people, combined.The museum and gallery shows for 2024 are equally full of eye-dazzlers — a rare chance to view centuries-old East Asian Buddhist art through the lens of gender; Korea’s first-ever museum retrospectives for European masters; and a dive into celebrated and overlooked Korean artists alike.The year also marks the 30th anniversary for both the Gwangju Biennale and the Korean Pavilion housed at the Venice Biennale.MuseumsAmong the standouts is the lineup presented by two Samsung Foundation of Culture venues: Leeum Museum of Art in Seoul and Ho-Am Art Museum in Yongin, Gyeonggi Province.
The Leeum will kick off the New Year with the blockbuster exhibit of Philippe Parreno. The French artist’s site-specific installations put different elements in the mix — artificial intelligence, life simulation programs, choreography and even thousands of helium-filled balloons — to approach storytelling as a multisensory experience.This institutional presentation will be the first of its kind in Korea and the largest show ever held in the museum’s 20-year history. The Ho-Am Art Museum is set to welcome visitors in March with a groundbreaking exhibition aiming to reexamine East Asian Buddhist art from a contemporary gender perspective. Looking at women as creators, patrons and models of centuries-old religious art, the show features 90 Buddhist masterpieces from over 25 institutions and temples worldwide.And leading up to the art-filled week of Frieze Seoul in September, the two museums will respectively host the country’s first solo shows of Anicka Yi, a Korean American artist who infuses fragrance, bacteria and marine algae into her sensorially rich pieces, and Nicholas Party, one of the current art market’s most in-demand stars.
Iconic names in the history of art and architecture will fill up other venues in the capital city throughout the year.These include Pritzker Prize-winning architect Norman Foster, whose well-known projects include the UFO-shaped Apple headquarters in California and the glass-domed Reichstag building in Berlin, at the Seoul Museum of Art in April; “The Scream” painter Edvard Munch (1863-1944) at the Seoul Arts Center’s Hangaram Art Museum in May; and Do Ho Suh, a globetrotting Korean artist behind the otherworldly fabric replicas of his former homes, at Art Sonje Center in August. The exhibits put forth by the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea (MMCA), are worth checking out for those craving something new yet timely.In April, the state-run institution’s Seoul branch will illuminate the half-century journey of Jung Young-sun, Korea’s first female landscape architect. And in September, it will traverse the oeuvre of nearly 30 Asian women creators active from the 1960s to today — Atsuko Tanaka (1932-2005), Pacita Abad, Hong Lee Hyun-sook, etc. — to explore the varied perspectives centered around the body. In addition to museums, leading galleries in central Seoul are gearing up for the New Year with their own eye-catching rosters.For its March program, Kukje Gallery will spotlight Kim Yun-shin, a sculptor who has been essentially “cut off” from Korea’s modernist art movements since her relocation to Argentina in the mid-1980s. This move prompted her to cultivate a uniquely personal visual grammar, primarily through the heavy medium of wood.Kim’s solo show will be followed by that of the renowned German photographer Candida Höfer in May. For five decades, Höfer has trained her lens on eerily deserted interiors of public spaces — libraries, museums and concert halls. The upcoming exhibit brings together her images of historic buildings 온라인카지노 that underwent renovation during the pandemic, prompting visitors to reflect on the recent adversities faced by humanity.
