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Samsung’s New Museum
in Seoul
The Samsung Group, the
South Korea-based technology corporation, has recently opened a new public museum to
display some of its extensive corporate art collection. After nine years of planning, and
at an estimated cost of 130 billion won ($113 million), the Leeum Samsung Museum of Art, opened October 13 in Seoul.
The 9,900 square meter museum is located on the slope of Mount. Namsan, flanked
by a vista of the Han River. It is in the middle of a commercial district popular
with tourists and close to Samsung Chairman Lee Kun-hee's own home.
The Leeum –
a combination of the family name of Samsung Group founder Lee Byung-Chul and the word museum -- is a complex of three interconnected
buildings, each designed by one of the world’s top architects. It replaces
the Ho-Am Gallery, the museum near City Hall that hosted major exhibitions for more than 20 years before it closed in February 2004.
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A fortress-like
brick structure by the Swiss architect Mario Botta, known as Museum I, houses the company's important holdings of
traditional Korean art. On display are 120 objects from the prehistoric era to the Chosun Dynasty (1395-1910). Museum 2, a sleek glass and steel structure
by French architect Jean Nouvel, contains a stunning collection of modern art
from 1910 to the present including important Korean and Western modern and contemporary art, from 1910 on. Among the works on view are major examples by Rothko. Stella, Judd, Beuys, Nam June Paik, Damien Hirst,
Matthew Barney, Lee BuI and Do-Ho Suh. The third building, called the Black Box, designed by Amsterdam-based Rem Koolhaas, holds the Samsung Child Education
and Culture Center, which contains classrooms as well as galleries for temporary exhibitions, and also serves as the museum’s
entry and links all its structures. The Leeum faced challenges even before construction began. To comply with a regulation limiting the
height of structures in the district to 10 meters, a hole more than 20 meters deep was dug in order to build, in the case
of Museum 1, what in effect is a seven-level building.
Samsung, today one of the most active patrons
of art in South Korea, founded its Samsung Foundation of Culture in 1965, to
preserve and broaden the awareness of Korea’s cultural heritage and its traditional and contemporary arts. It supports a large variety of cultural and artistic activities and academic research, and manages the
Ho-Am Museum (which opened in 1982 in Kyeongkido to house a collection of 100 works),
and the Rodin Gallery -- which opened in 1999 in central Seoul , displaying a permanent collection of the French sculptor's
work, including versions of "The Burghers of Calais" and "The Gates of Hell.."
The Leeum is the culmination of Samsung's efforts to bring together its vast collection of traditional, modern and
contemporary art under one dazzling and well-designed roof. The collections on
display in the Leeum Samsung Museum of Art have, until now, been kept in the Ho-am Art Museum.
Despite all of the hype and publicity that
has surrounded the opening of the museum, it is modest and elegantly subdued.
The well-manicured garden includes works by Louise Bourgeois and Alexander Calder's colorful, mesmerizing kinetic sculptures
enhance the museum's green space. Visitors start with the entrance of the
museum, which is reached by a descending ramp. The sunken, basement-level lobby area links the two museums and child and culture
center together. One of the technological innovations of the exhibition spaces
includes personal digital guides that provide narration and context for each of the works in the museum. The digital guide system, designed by Samsung Electronics, allows visitors to get brief interpretations
of each piece in both audio and video, through a handheld device that receives signals from sensors built into the floor.
Museum I
Museum I features more than 120 Korean
traditional works of art from the pre-historic era to the Joseon Dynasty (1395-1910). The building is a solid terracotta form
designed by the Swiss architect Mario Botta, symbolizing the earth and fire used to mold ceramics. From the outside, Botta's design is reminiscent of an ancient Korean fortresses and his design for the
Kyobo Gangnam Tower, completed last year. The trees on the top of the building are meant to evoke fluttering flags on medieval
towers; the building's inverted cone is covered with a rotunda rooftop, a shape Botta has often used in his museum designs,
including his San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. Built in a key shape, Museum
1 alternates between a long rectangular exhibition space and a rotunda area. Chiaroscuro
lighting and freestanding display cases add drama to the historical objects that
are thousands of years old.
One of the most impressive aspects of Leeum
is the scale of the museum's collection, which has never been shown to the public in its entirety. It was often rumored that
Ho-Am's collections were never clearly detailed in order to avoid raising questions about the works' origins or their import
routes. But given that the museum's official figure for its collection is over 15,000 pieces, visitors can well imagine that
what they are seeing in Leeum is only a small portion of the collection.
Some of the beautiful works on display include
ceramics and pottery, Buddhist paintings, metal ware, traditional painting and calligraphy.
Some exquisite works include a Celadon Gourd-Shaped Ewer with Underglaze Copper-Red Lotus Design (National Treasure
No. 133); a Goryeo Dynasty (937-1392) Miniature Pagoda (National Treasure No. 213); Amitabha Triad (National Treasure No.
218), ) and a blue-and-white porcelain jar with plum and bamboo design (National Treasure No. 219). Most of the collection was acquired by Lee's father, Lee Byung-chul, who began acquiring traditional Korean
arts in the 1930s. Dismayed by what he felt was a drain of important cultural artifacts from Korea and a lack of appreciation
of its cultural heritage, he bought many objects from Japanese private collections in the years immediately following the
end of that country's colonial rule of Korea in 1945.
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Museum 2
Museum 2 consists of masterworks dating from 1910 when Western modern art was officially
introduced to Korea. The collection has been assembled largely by Hong Lee Ra-hee, the museum's new director and wife of the Samsung chairman. In addition to
the work of leading artists of the early 20th century, and contemporary artists such as, Kim Whanki and Lee Ufan, the collection
contains important works by such U.S. and European artists as Mark Rothko, Frank Stella, Donald Judd, Andy Warhol, Joseph
Beuys, Matthew Barney and Damien Hirst. Samsung spent approximately $8.4 million on art and culture in 2003 and continues to collect energetically.
Korean artists featured in the collection are the works of Lee Sang-beom (Cheong-jeon) and
Byun Kwan-sik (So-jeong). Both artists are known for developing a modern pictorial style while maintaining traditional Korean
painting methods. Also among the highlights are the works of Lee Joong-sup, Park Soo-keun and Chang Uc-cin, who are celebrated
for their assimilation of Western painting techniques to express a uniquely Korean ethos. In addition, the collection introduces
internationally acclaimed Korean artists from overseas, including the works of Kim Whanki, Paik Nam June and Lee Ufan as well
as a new generation of Korean artists including Seo Do-ho and Lee Bul. There
are plans to display works by emerging Korean artists around the museum and to raise awareness of Korean contemporary art
overseas through links with Western commercial galleries.
For his first project in Korea, Jean Nouvel enclosed Samsung's modern and contemporary
art collection within an imposing and dramatic three-level structure. Nouvel's design
features a mix of black and gray iron sunk into the ground. The overall layout employs contrasts between iron and glass
for a startlingly modern look The top floor begins with Samsung's modern Korean art collection; the first floor shows post-World
War II international art while the high-ceiling ed basement space shows international contemporary art. Nouvel created unique exhibition "boxes" that pierce
the inner and outer walls of the museum and utilize glass and rusted, charcoal-colored steel. The structures create a series
of variegated spaces reminiscent of side chapels that are devoted to individual artists.
The structures also seem to function as a way to meld art and architecture: standing outside of them in the central
open areas, the boxes create a kind of architectural picture frame around the viewers. Visitors themselves become works of
art within Nouvel's building.
The Black Box
Black
Box, the Samsung Child Education & Culture Center is a unique and visually striking building that will hold a number
of special exhibitions each year, including international exhibitions. The first exhibition at Black Box that began
on Oct. 19, 2004 will continue through April 9, 2005 to commemorate the new museum. This special exhibition, "Muse-Um : Companionship
of Plurality," explores the world of architectural language and art by the three
architects of Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art.
Perhaps the
most unusual is Koolhaas' kinder
surprise-like child and culture center. Instead of creating a traditional design
by dividing the building into clearly demarcated floors and interior and exterior spaces, Koolhaas has created a "black box"
building ensconced within the larger museum structure. Circulation is conceived
around the experience of the black box by descending under it, into it and moving above it. This movement provides the visitor
a rich experience of the dynamic relationship between the building, the site and the city.
From the outside, the education
center is all glass and angles. On the inside, the "black box", a black concrete structure that houses temporary exhibitions,
hovers like a UFO above a children's exhibition in the second level basement.
A narrow stairway leads into the mother ship, a dark space currently hosting "Muse-Um," an exhibition about the three architects. Other displays to be
held in this space in the near future include an exhibition of drawings by Korean artist Lee Jung-seop and a traveling exhibition
of recent works by Matthew Barney.
An obvious
question about the museum is its location, which seems like a hazardous choice,
away from the traditional gallery districts and the central city. But it has potential advantages, such as its proximity to
Itaewon, a center of the expatriate community. A more immediate question is whether the narrow roads leading to the museum
will create traffic problems.
Location: 747-12, Hannam-dong, Seoul Korea
Additional information about the museum is available at the website: http://www.leeum.org,
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The Humanities Exchange, PO Box 1608, Largo, FL 33779
Tel: 514-935-1228; Fax: 514-935-1299
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