[News Culture] The National Museum of Korea will become more than an exhibition space over the Chuseok holiday, with three days of outdoor performances bringing together orchestral gugak, samulnori, traditional performing arts, pansori and world music.
The “2026 The Art Spot Series — National Museum of Korea” will take place Sept. 24, 26 and 27 at the museum’s Open Plaza in Seoul. No performance is scheduled for Sept. 25, Chuseok Day, when the museum will be closed.
The program is structured to show different ways Korean traditional music is performed today, ranging from large-scale orchestral arrangements of folk material to percussion-based yeonhui, chamber music and collaborations between pansori and world music.
The opening day features the Gugak Orchestra Gyeol and Samul Gwangdae. Gyeol will present folk songs and samulnori-based material in an orchestral setting, while Samul Gwangdae will perform gilnori and pangut, drawing on the dynamic movement and percussion central to traditional outdoor performance.
On Sept. 26, chamber ensemble SoriON and Yeonhui Company Uhee take the stage. SoriON combines Korean instruments, including the jangsaenap — a modernized version of the taepyeongso — with Western classical instruments. Yeonhui Company Uhee approaches traditional performance through newly created repertory, including vocalized samulnori using gueum, or mnemonic syllables traditionally used to transmit instrumental music.
The final day begins with Yeonhui Performer Group Cheorat, whose work places performers in close interaction with the audience.
The closing performance pairs pansori singer Jun-su Kim with ethnic fusion band Second Moon. Their collaboration brings pansori into a world-music setting, using the encounter between Korean vocal tradition and contemporary ensemble sound as the basis for the program.
The setting is also central to the series. Rather than asking audiences to enter a dedicated theater, the performances are staged in the museum’s Open Plaza, allowing visitors who have come for the collections and exhibitions to encounter traditional performing arts as part of the same visit.
That approach has shaped the Art Spot Series at the National Museum of Korea since 2018, when the Traditional Performing Arts Promotion Foundation began presenting Chuseok performances there in partnership with the museum.
This year’s program again avoids treating gugak as a single fixed form. Orchestral music, folk percussion, yeonhui, chamber performance and pansori appear side by side, presenting Korean traditional music as a field that continues to operate across different scales, instruments and performance formats.
Following the museum performances, the 2026 Art Spot Series will continue in October with programs at Jarasum and Yeosu.
For Chuseok visitors, the museum program places music alongside material heritage rather than separating the two. Audiences can move from galleries devoted to Korea’s cultural past into an outdoor space where traditional repertories are being performed, adapted and transmitted in the present.
Reported by News Culture M.J._mj94070777@nc.press
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