Samsung’s Late Chairman Donates 23K Artworks To South Korea, 1.5K Shown In Seoul
Image by MMCA
The National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMCA) in Korea has received a whopping 1,488 pieces of art from the Lee Kun-Hee collection, which includes about 23,000 works in total.
This is dubbed “the donation of the century” by the museum, and brings its total collection above 10,000 works. According to the press release, the pieces donated include 1,369 artworks by Korean artists and 119 by overseas artists.
“The rare and major artworks… have greatly enhanced the quality and quantity of the museum,” Park Mi-Hwa, the museum’s senior curator, told CNN. “We have obtained masterpieces that would have been difficult to purchase with our annual collection budget of 5 billion won (US$4.35 million).”
The MMCA will display these artworks, which are currently being inspected and registered as the MMCA’s collection, over a series of exhibitions. The first debuted yesterday, including 58 pieces by 34 Korean artists such as Lee Sang-Beom, Lee Jung-Seop, and Kim Sou. Three themes span the pieces shown in MMCA Lee Kun-hee Collection: Masterpieces of Korean Art: ‘Adoption and Transformation’; ‘Shows of Individuality’; ‘Setting Down Roots and Seeking New Avenues’.
In the statement, MMCA director Youn Bum-Mo thanked the family for their donations, and continued on to say “the MMCA will grant more opportunities for the public to enjoy the high quality donated artworks and continue to expand the horizon of the research on art history by studying Lee's collection going forward.”
[via CNN, image via MMCA]
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