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The Centre Pompidou continues to expand and cross borders. The Paris museum is set to establish a presence in South Korea, thanks to its Constellation programme, which enables it to lend works in France and around the world.
The Korean branch will open on 4 June in Yeouido, the main financial district of Seoul. It will be the institution’s second Asian site, after the one opened in Shanghai.
“To mark the 140th anniversary of diplomatic relations between Korea and France, we are inaugurating the ‘Centre Pompidou Hanwha’ as part of a partnership with the Centre Pompidou in France,” said Jade Kaunhye Lim, director of exhibitions at the Hanwha Cultural Foundation.
A four-year collaboration has been signed to stage, in the Korean capital, two exhibitions a year drawn from the modern and contemporary collections of the Paris museum. “We plan to present world‑renowned masterpieces of modern art, as well as international art exhibitions curated by our own team,” she explained.
Cubism as the first exhibition
Cubism has been chosen to launch this new Korean cultural venue: “The Cubists: Inventing Modern Vision”. According to the Hanwha Foundation for Culture, the exhibition will present more than one hundred works loaned by the Centre Pompidou in Paris. It will showcase works by 54 artists, including big names such as Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque and Fernand Léger.
“Cubism is a demanding choice, and I think I can safely say that this is the first major exhibition devoted to cubism in Asia in fifty years, with more than a hundred works, many of them from the Centre Pompidou,” said Laurent Le Bon, president of the Centre Pompidou.
“This is a fundamental dynamic that we felt was essential, and choosing cubism simply means choosing the greatest artistic movement of the early 20th century, the one that helped us to see the world in a different way. For us, embarking on this project meant sending out a strong signal,” he added.
But beyond merely presenting foreign works of art to the Korean public, “we want to act as a springboard to propel Korean art onto the international stage through the Centre Pompidou’s vast global network,” concluded Jade Kaunhye Lim.
After cubism, artists such as Henri Matisse and Marc Chagall will be exhibited at this new cultural venue in Seoul.