Modern art museum unveils new permanent exhibitions featuring Korean art collection

By Park Han-sol

The National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea (MMCA) is set to launch a string of permanent exhibitions this year, positioning them as an encyclopedic overview of its Korean art collection from 1900 to the present.

Titled the “MMCA Collection,” these shows will debut in May at the museum’s Seoul and Gwacheon branches. The displays will feature a rotating selection from its 11,800-piece holding, including masterpieces donated by the late Samsung Group Chairman Lee Kun-hee’s family, with updates scheduled annually.

The Gwacheon branch is slated to present the acquisitions from 1900 to 1990 through a chronological lens, while the Seoul venue will highlight some 80 gems from the 1960s to the 2010s — from Kim Whanki and Park Seo-bo to Do Ho Suh and Haegue Yang.

MMCA Director Kim Sung-hee emphasized the importance of a permanent exhibition that offers a comprehensive glimpse into Korea’s art history, especially to cater to the growing influx of international visitors.

“Our collection had previously lacked the scale and depth needed to sustain permanent displays,” Kim In-hye, head of MMCA’s curatorial team, said during a New Year press conference in Seoul, Tuesday.

“The new annually rotating exhibitions will occupy about 30 percent of the total gallery space. This shift allows us to focus on fewer but more substantial thematic presentations (to fill the remaining galleries).”

On the administrative front, one pressing priority for the MMCA is securing additional storage space to alleviate its severe in-house capacity shortage. Currently, the main Seoul branch is operating at nearly 90 percent of its storage capacity. To address this, the institution is in talks with the Korea Minting and Security Printing Corp. to utilize the banknote manufacturer’s unused underground facilities at its headquarters in North Gyeongsang Province.

Meanwhile, to promote in-depth academic exploration of modern and contemporary Korean art, the museum has launched a new research fellowship program aimed at fostering global discourse among scholars from Korea and around the world. The first fellow for this year is Alexander Alberro, an art critic and professor of modern and contemporary art history at Columbia University.

Exhibition lineup

Headlining the institution’s 2025 lineup is the first Asian solo exhibition of Australian sculptor Ron Mueck, co-organized with the Cartier Foundation for Contemporary Art. Mueck’s monumental, hyper-realistic human figures, including the striking installation “Mass” — a towering pile of 100 human skulls — will take over the museum’s Seoul branch in April.

During the busy September art season, which coincides with Frieze Seoul, the MMCA will fill its venues with shows zooming in on the Korean art scene’s dynamism, from modern trailblazers to contemporary talents. Highlights include a retrospective of “water drop painter” Kim Tschang-yeul, the “Korea Artist Prize 2025” and “The Modern Nostalgia and Landscape Painting,” a group show reflecting on themes of loss and rediscovery of homeland in commemoration of the 80th anniversary of Korea’s liberation from Japan's 1910-45 colonial rule.

The museum’s collaborations with international cultural institutions will continue this year through several joint and touring exhibitions.

“Korean Treasures: Collected, Cherished, Shared,” featuring gems from the late Samsung Group chairman’s 23,000-piece collection, is set to make its international debut at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art in November. Following its Washington, D.C. run, it will travel to the Art Institute of Chicago and the British Museum.

“For All That Breathes On Earth,” a retrospective originally staged at the MMCA Seoul last year to honor Jung Young-sun, Korea’s first female landscape architect, will be brought to the Procuratie Vecchie in Venice, concurrent with the Venice Architecture Biennale.