11 November 2026
MMCA Seoul opens The Way of Reading on 20 November, following text and image from paper to screen, as any subway carriage here confirms. Three shows close: Seoul's urban plans at the Seoul Museum of History on the 8th, Kim Jeonghui's circle at the National Museum of Korea on the 22nd, Leeum's environments by women artists on the 29th.
MMCA SeoulOpens 20 November
How text and image relate as reading moves from print to screen, drawn from the MMCA collection alongside graphic design and publishing work. The epilogue is any Seoul subway carriage, every face lit by a phone.
Leeum Museum of ArtCloses 29 November
Walk-in, sensory environments by women artists including Judy Chicago, Lygia Clark and Marta Minujin, reconstructed from a strand of postwar art often left out of the canon.
National Museum of KoreaCloses 22 November
Letters, calligraphy and paintings from the circle around Kim Jeonghui, the 19th-century Joseon scholar-calligrapher, in the Calligraphy and Painting Gallery on the second floor.
Dongdaemun Design Plaza (DDP)Until 21 February
Korea's first major Wayne Thiebaud retrospective, built around his paintings of everyday objects.
Seoul Museum of HistoryCloses 8 November, free
Sixty years after Seoul's first master plan of 1966, the show traces how those early visions shaped the city and what might come next.
National Folk Museum of KoreaUntil 14 February, free
North Korean folk culture through regional memories of Gaeseong, Hwanghae-do, Pyeongan-do and Hamgyeong-do, with Geumgangsan Mountain as a memory both Koreas share.
Amorepacific Museum of Art (APMA)Until 28 February
In Wall Drawing #869A, one person drew a wobbly black line and the others traced it in red, yellow or blue, each slightly differently. Thirteen of the wall drawings were made fresh for APMA from LeWitt's written instructions.
Seoul Museum of ArtUntil 21 February, free
Agent Ruby, a winking chatbot face from 1998, often admits it needs a better algorithm. Asia's first museum survey of Lynn Hershman Leeson runs from X-Ray Man (1970) to a 2025 self-portrait, with the laserdisk work Lorna in between.
SongEun Art SpaceFree
Exhibition at SONGEUN setting Roman heritage in dialogue with Korean contemporary art.
Arario Museum in Space
Five historic Korean folding screens by Yu Deokjang, Kim Heesoon, Kim Eunho, Park Saengkwang and Pak Nosoo, tracing bamboo, birds and dragons across centuries of ink painting.
Hangaram Art MuseumFree
Annual showcase of new work by visual artists from the Seoul Disability Arts Creation Center, co-hosted with the Seoul Foundation for Arts and Culture since 2023.
National Museum of Korea
Second display of newly donated artifacts, on calligraphy shared between calligrapher and donor: works by Hwang Gi-ro, Kim Gu and Yi Gi-u, and a poem album. Donation Room 4.
Seoul Museum of Craft Art
54 new works by 35 resident artists of Sindang Creative Arcade (17th cohort), read through five qualities: generation, transformation, accumulation, structure and connection.
National Museum of Korea
A thematic show on 19th-century Joseon scholar-calligrapher Kim Jeonghui, exploring his intellectual circle through letters, calligraphy and paintings. Calligraphy and Painting Gallery, 2F.
Seoul Museum of ArtFree
Works from the donated GanaArt Collection of Korean realist art examining how technology and industrialization reshaped urban life, social order and individual experience.
MMCA Seoul
Second edition of the MMCA x LG OLED media-art commission, presenting Christine Sun Kim's "Have Many Dumb Fights Against Rock" on a large curved OLED screen installation in Seoul Box.
War Memorial of KoreaFree
Special exhibition on ordinary people's lives in the Korean War, told through small everyday objects such as rusty tableware, scavenged food and worn belongings.
Leeum Museum of Art
Immersive, sensory environments by pioneering women artists including Judy Chicago, Lygia Clark and Marta Minujin, reconstructing a radical strand of postwar art often left out of the canon.
Kansong Art Museum
Marking Jeon Hyeong-pil's 120th birth anniversary, a show reading the Kansong Collection through the records inscribed on its paulownia storage boxes and the history of its preservation.
MMCA Seoul
Korea's leading contemporary-art award exhibition, presenting new and key earlier works by the four 2026 finalists: Lee Haemin Sun, Lee Jungwoo, Jeon Hyunsun, and Hong Jin-hwon.
Seoul Museum of Craft Art
Baek Jaewon and Oh Serin combine metal, clay, concrete and plastic to show how objects change through hiding, adding and accumulating, in the Show Window Gallery.
Art Sonje Center
A 90-minute sound play with no projected image: three linked plays set in a fictional underground club, heard from the Art Hall's basement theatre before an empty screen.
National Folk Museum of KoreaFree
Kerala's Onam harvest festival explored through floral arrangements, ritual objects, festive foods and the Kummattikali masked dance, drawing parallels with Korea's Chuseok.
Horim Museum (Sinsa)
A special exhibition on traditional East Asian concepts of time, examining cyclical time, astronomical observation and the rhythms of daily life through the museum's collection, across three galleries.
Dongdaemun Design Plaza (DDP)
An interactive family exhibition based on the global children's franchise Baby Shark, inviting visitors to explore a secret ocean through immersive play zones.
Art Sonje Center
A group sculpture show across The Ground, the hanok garden and the rooftop garden, asking how verticality, a core principle of sculpture and architecture, became a metaphor for masculinity.
Leeum Museum of Art
Koo Jeong A's largest solo show in Korea to date, spanning three decades of work with phosphorescence, magnets, scent and skatepark architecture spread through the M2 galleries, lobby and grounds.
Art Sonje Center
Sculptor Haneyl Choi on the body's involuntary rhythms and moments when body and consciousness fall out of sync, such as hypnic jerks, drunken lurching and sleepwalking.
Art Sonje Center
Japanese artist Meiro Koizumi's first institutional solo show in Korea, in charcoal, sculpture, three-channel video and VR, on the afterlives of war and nationalism in postwar Japan.
Seoul Museum of ArtFree
A large-scale crocheted installation by Ernesto Neto, filled with guava and tea-tree leaves, transforming the museum's lobby and public spaces with sensory forms drawn from Brazil's Neo-Concrete movement.
Whanki Museum
Collection special exhibition centred on Kim Whanki's 1963-74 New York period, tracing how his wife Kim HyangAn built the museum's holdings after his death.
Whanki Museum
At Suhyangsanbang: the Korean art collection Kim HyangAn built after founding the Whanki Foundation in 1974, and what came after her.
Seoul Museum of Craft ArtFree
Traces the journey of lacquerware craftsmanship, from cultivating lacquer trees to the artisan techniques behind finished pieces.
National Museum of Korea
Four Buddhist manuscripts from Dunhuang's Library Cave, bought by the Yi Royal Family Museum, shown with the results of the museum's 2025 research report. Central Asia Gallery.
National Museum of Korea
A thematic display of ceramics decorated with bamboo motifs across the seasons, in the Buncheong Ware and White Porcelain Gallery, permanent exhibition hall 3F.
National Hangeul MuseumFree
Special exhibition marking Hangeul Day's 100th anniversary and the 580th anniversary of the Hunminjeongeum's promulgation, held off-site at the National Museum of Korean Contemporary History.
National Museum of Korean Contemporary HistoryFree
Marks 100 years of Hangul Day, from the first Gagyanal ceremony in 1926 to today, through the history of learning and celebrating the Korean alphabet.
MMCA Seoul
A large-scale retrospective of Korea's leading installation artist Do Ho Suh, spanning early works, major pieces on home and migration, and ongoing projects.
National Folk Museum of KoreaFree
North Korean folk culture through regional memories of Gaeseong, Hwanghae-do, Pyeongan-do and Hamgyeong-do, shared everyday traditions, and Geumgangsan Mountain as a common cultural memory.
Dongdaemun Design Plaza (DDP)
Korea's first major retrospective of Wayne Thiebaud, one of the 20th century's leading artists, known for his distinctive paintings of everyday objects.
Seoul Museum of ArtFree
Asia's first museum survey of American media-art pioneer Lynn Hershman Leeson, tracing six decades of work on identity, surveillance and the human-technology interface.
Amorepacific Museum of Art (APMA)
Korea's first major retrospective of conceptual art pioneer Sol LeWitt, with roughly 45 works including 13 wall drawings realised anew within APMA's galleries.
Seoul Museum of HistoryFree
The layered history of one Insa-dong site, from a Joseon yangban residence and royal quarters to a modern restaurant and the site of the 1919 Declaration of Independence.
Seoul Museum of Craft ArtFree
Designer Chang Eungbok reinterprets the aesthetics of Korean gyubang craft and folk art as contemporary patterns across textiles, furniture and artisan techniques.
Buk-Seoul Museum of ArtFree
A sound installation in which visitors turn handles to blend live audio streamed from around Nowon-gu with the imagined footsteps of a fictional stray cat, exploring whose sensory experience of the city counts as "normal".
Buk-Seoul Museum of ArtFree
A media-art show of imperfect, experimental humanoid robots and sound works by Kwon Byungjun, inviting visitors to reconsider how they welcome "strangers" and difference.
Buk-Seoul Museum of ArtFree
Woodworking sculptures and geometric installations by Small Studio Semi that engage senses beyond sight, inviting visitors to experience the museum's spaces through their bodies rather than in silence.
Seoul Museum of Craft ArtFree
A collaboration with the Oryundae Korean Martyrs Museum exploring how craft mediates the memories of the site's people and places across eras.
Seoul Museum of Craft Art
A hands-on show of furniture-maker Small Studio Semi's wood works for children and families, to touch and move, in the Children's Museum.
National Folk Museum of KoreaFree
Interactive Children's Museum exhibition following a bunny doll into the museum's collection, with hands-on excavation, cleaning, conservation and packing activities.
A short note now and then when something new opens worth your time.
