National Museum of Korea
Galaria Del Paseo, Manantiales, Uruguay. Left to right: Silvia Arrozes (director) and Cecilia Stein
There were also days for visiting the galleries of Korea, one such trip to Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art, one of the most beautiful small museums of art in the world, this is a day well spent.
imagine the complexity of the museums history and the dedication of its staff that has ensured the safe passage of so many precious items through all the upheavals of Korean history.
The collection includes Korean traditional art, modern, contemporary and experimental art. The museum’s ARTSPECTRUM 2012 show was also open on the day we visited, exhibiting the works of a group of highly skilful Korean artists. Media included photography and moving image and installation works. Then a visit to SEMA, the Seoul Museum of Modern Art, another contemporary art space with a large number of multimedia works, again this was a very worthwhile experience.
In 2005 the museum moved to its new home in the Yongsan complex in the Central District of Seoul and in scale the National Museum of Korea is one of the six largest museums in the world. The museum’s collection is now being expanded to cover works from Northeast Asia, Southeast Asia, Central Asia and Western Asia and recent expansion has allowed the museum to build its activities across the museum’s four fields of archaeology, fine art, history and Asian art. This again is an impressive institution housed in an extraordinary building.
We also made two visits to the National Museum of Korea (Seoul) which houses an extensive collection of Korean and Asian art from prehistory on. A sign in the foyer of this very large museum says that it is the ninth most visited museum in the world. It is not hard to
There were visits to historical places including the Jongmyo Shrine, the keeping place for the ancestral tablets of deceased kings and queens. The original shrine was built in 1395. This shrine was destroyed in 1592 during the Japanese invasion of that time.
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What exists today was built in 1608. Of all the Confucian states in Asia only Korea has preserved its royal shrine where the rites of Jongmyo Jerye and Jongmyo Jeryeak are still performed. In 1995 Jongmyo was placed on the UNESCO World Heritage List and in 2001 the royal ancestral rites and music, Jongmyo Jerye and Jongmyo Jeryeak, were given Masterpieces of the Oral and Intangible Heritage of Humanity status by UNESCO. Always with an eye out for nature we visited the Natural History Museum so that provided an opportunity to reflect on the natural history of Korea. Creative cowboy director ANDREA HYLANDS has a number of her artworks in public collections in Korea, Japan, China and Taiwan, so this trip to Korea was a chance to catch up with curators. Heading out of Seoul one morning we visited the City of Icheon where museum visits had been arranged for us. The three cities of Icheon, Gwangju