[News Culture] Anyone staying in Seoul for Chuseok will have plenty of art to see.
The National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea (MMCA) and the Seoul Museum of Art (SeMA) are keeping major venues open over the Sept. 24-27 holiday, with free admission at participating museums. The lineup ranges from major surveys of Do Ho Suh and Youngkuk Yoo to exhibitions devoted to Yoon Oh, Heecheon Kim and British photographer Martin Parr.
MMCA Seoul will open Sept. 24, 26 and 27, closing only on Chuseok Day, Sept. 25. MMCA Deoksugung will stay open throughout the four-day break. Admission at both venues will be free.
Do Ho Suh anchors the program at MMCA Seoul with a large-scale solo exhibition spanning his early work and many of the installations and architectural projects that have defined his career.
Also on view is the 2026 edition of the Korea Artist Prize, bringing together four artists selected for one of Korea’s best-known contemporary art awards. “This Is (Not) Conceptual Art” turns to the development of conceptual practices in Korean art, while Christine Sun Kim takes over the museum’s OLED series with “Have Many Dumb Fight Against Rock,” continuing her exploration of sound, language and communication.
A different chapter of Korean art history is on view at MMCA Deoksugung, where the museum has mounted its first retrospective of Daiwon Lee. “Nothing Here Makes You Sad” looks across the painter’s career and the landscapes for which he became widely known.
SeMA is opening seven venues during the same holiday period, all with free admission. Most will operate from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Seosomun Main Branch and Buk-Seoul Museum of Art will extend hours to 9 p.m. on Sept. 25 for Seoul Culture Night, while Nam-Seoul Museum of Art will close at 6 p.m.
One of the network’s biggest draws is Youngkuk Yoo at Seosomun Main Branch. Organized for the 110th anniversary of his birth, “A Mountain Within Me” revisits a career that helped shape the development of abstract painting in Korea. Mountains, a recurring subject throughout Yoo’s work, become the thread running through his changing use of color, geometry and form.
Buk-Seoul Museum of Art pairs Inhwan Oh and Seoyoung Jang in “Human Error,” a two-person show examining identity and life under increasingly technological social systems.
At Seo-Seoul Museum of Art, Heecheon Kim moves between video, photography, games and digital imagery in “Moles,” continuing his interest in the unstable boundary between physical and virtual experience.
The Seoul Museum of Art Archives, meanwhile, turns to Yoon Oh 40 years after his death. Built around material held in the archive, the exhibition includes printing plates and records of his creative process, offering a closer look at how one of Korea’s most influential printmakers developed his work.
Photography Seoul Museum of Art offers the most extensive international photography show on the holiday calendar. “We Are Martin Parr” brings together more than 500 photographs and about 90 photobooks, surveying the British photographer’s decades-long fascination with tourism, leisure, consumption and the peculiarities of everyday behavior.
Sook Jin Jo is the focus at Nam-Seoul Museum of Art, where “That’s How the Light Gets In” moves from her early plywood pieces to more recent sculpture. At Paik Ground Seoul Museum of Art, the permanent exhibition “Megatron Rhapsody” keeps Nam June Paik in the conversation, looking at both his work and its continuing resonance for artists working today.
MMCA is adding a small Chuseok giveaway to the schedule. Visitors who stop by between Sept. 23 and 27, post a photo from their visit with the designated hashtags and submit the post will be entered into a drawing. Twenty winners will receive a “Do Ho Suh City Soap, Seoul Home,” modeled after a Seoul residence where Suh once lived.
Taken together, the holiday openings offer a compact survey of several generations of Korean art alongside a major international photography exhibition. A single afternoon could mean Do Ho Suh at MMCA Seoul or Youngkuk Yoo at Seosomun; a longer itinerary can stretch into media art, archives and photography across the city.
Reported by News Culture M.J._mj94070777@nc.press
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