Leeum Art Museum

1. Museum 2, 2. Museum 1

Younghui and I went to explore the Samsung Leeum Art Museum on Friday. I'm glad someone finally clued me in to the fact that the Leeum is now open to the public regularly (visitors used to have to make a reservation first). Thanks, Younghui!

The Leeum is made up of two parts: Museum 1, designed by Mario Botta, is dedicated to traditional art. Museum 2, designed by Jean Nouvel, is for modern art. Both buildings are beautiful and intriguing architectural spaces. In Museum 2. we enjoyed seeing such a nice collection of well-chosen contemporary standards like Damien Hirst and Matthew Barney. In Museum 1, there were landscaped ink paintings as well as Koryo dynasty celadon and Chosun dynasty buncheong ware. While walking through both museums, we were guided by a Samsung-made audio guide. When we stopped in front of each piece, a little black disc in the floor communicated with a sensor in each audio guide to prompt the recorded segment about that piece.

I wonder if having two separate buildings for such express purposes forces an unnatural dichotomy. Many a work of pottery or ink painting display distinctly modern-looking forms, while contemporary artists might draw from ancient themes. The continuity is hard to see when the art is forced into two separate buildings...

Maybe one day Leeum can make a Museum 3, a special place to exhibit the merging of past and present, of traditional alongside contemporary....? Art, just like any other aspect of culture, doesn't inhabit boundaries so much as it crosses them... I propose that they don't even have to build a separate building for it! Museum 3 can be Seoul itself, with the prompted descriptions emanating from inside Samsung's little audio guide as visitors run around the city... That's the kind of curatorial experiment I'd love best...

UPDATE: oh, hey, whaddya know....