Klimt in Korea

With the weather starting to warm up a tiny bit, we decided to venture out this past weekend and check one the many museums in Seoul off our "to do" list. We read online about an exhibit of works by Gustav Klimt at the Seoul Arts Center that sounded exciting and expertly followed the directions for getting there using the subway. It was 2 transfers away but definitely worth it. Seoul Arts Center is a large complex of buildings including 3 museums, an opera hall and a large music hall for theater performances. We may have to visit again sometime soon to take in an opera, ballet or Broadway musical.

Here's a view of the main entrance. It looked very promising and didn't disappoint. It was quite modern looking inside and the large open spaces reminded me of museums in the U.S. Typically everything in Korea is small and crowded.

Here is an outside view of the Hangaram Art Museum taken from the courtyard above the main entrance.

A view of the whole complex from across the busy street. On the left is the Art Museum and on the right is the Design Museum. The courtyard and giant opera house are in between the two.

The Design Museum had a small exhibition of furniture by Charles and Ray Eames, which made us feel like we were back in design school. Unfortunately, they left Ray's name out of all the signage. It was nice to walk through the room and realize that, for once, we knew so much more about what we were looking at than the Koreans who were there with us. The familiarity of it all was really comforting.

They had a few vintage pieces like these...

...and a lot not so vintage pieces like this lounge chair with the Herman Miller tag still hanging off the back of it. It was very sad looking, pushed up against the wall all by itself. Some other pieces also appeared as if they were just unloaded off a Design Within Reach truck.

As for the Gustav Klimt exhibit...it was a little underwhelming. Many of the works displayed were drawings and his poster designs. We had hoped to see more paintings since they are the most interesting of all his work. We did see the painting above of Judith and it was beautiful.

We both love Klimt's painting of "The Kiss", but unfortunately it did not make the trip to Korea from it's home in Vienna.

The rest of Valentine's Day was spent exploring a new area of Seoul, sitting at Starbucks (no trip to Seoul is complete without it) and at the end of the day we saw "He's Just Not That Into You" at the small theater by our school in Ansan called the Meganex.