The Seoul Museum of Art (Director: Choi Eun Ju) has announced its major exhibitions for 2026. Building on its operational achievements in 2025, the museum will organize and operate its programs in 2026 under the institutional theme of “Creation” and the exhibition theme of “Technology.”
 
Across its various venues—including the Seosomun Main Branch, Buk-Seoul Museum of Art, Art Archives Seoul Museum of Art, Photography Seoul Museum of Art, and the Seo-Seoul Museum of Art, scheduled to open next year—the museum will present a wide range of theme-driven exhibitions and multidimensional programs.
 
1. Seosomun Main Branch

In the first half of 2026, the Seosomun Main Branch will present a solo exhibition of Yoo Youngkuk (May) as part of its Korean Modern Masters series. In the second half of the year, it will host the international survey exhibition 《Lynn Hershman Leeson》 (October).
 
The Korean Modern Masters series is one of the first newly launched projects by the Seoul Museum of Art and will offer an in-depth overview of Yoo Youngkuk’s expansive artistic practice, including previously unexhibited works. Meanwhile, the international artist exhibition responds directly to the museum’s 2026 exhibition theme, “Technology,” and provides a comprehensive look at over sixty years of work by Lynn Hershman Leeson, a pioneering American media artist and filmmaker. This exhibition is especially significant as her first solo museum exhibition in Asia.

2. Buk-Seoul Museum of Art

The Buk-Seoul Museum of Art will host the media-focused exhibition 《The Art of Writing》 (April), which experiments with and expands the sensory relationships among seeing, reading, and listening, as well as the international exchange exhibition 《Sound Has Always Been Alive》 (December).
 
《The Art of Writing》 explores writing as a creative process that fosters connections and dialogues across artistic disciplines, encompassing forms such as poetry, novels, essays, scripts, and song lyrics. Meanwhile, 《Sound Has Always Been Alive》 is a large-scale international curated exhibition that brings to fruition the SeMA–Nordic and Baltic cooperation spanning from 2024 to 2026.
 
From avant-garde sound art rooted in radio to sound-based performances that invite experiences of coexistence and shared time, the exhibition will feature artists from Korea, Poland, Germany, and beyond, amplifying the artistic, technological, and social resonances of sound.

3. Art Archives Seoul Museum of Art

In 2026, the Art Archives Seoul Museum of Art will present the collection-based exhibition 《The Oh Yoon Collection》 (August). Organized to mark the 40th anniversary of the death of Oh Yoon (1946–1986), a leading figure of Minjung Art in the 1980s, the exhibition revisits his artistic world and creative process through the Oh Yoon archives acquired in 2024.


4. Nam-Seoul Museum of Art

The Nam-Seoul Museum of Art will host the annual sculptor solo exhibition 《Sook Jin Jo》 (July). This annual exhibition, dedicated to offering an in-depth reassessment of mid-career and senior artists who warrant renewed attention in the history of Korean sculpture, aims to illuminate the Korean art historical context in which Jo Sook Jin’s practice took shape. It also examines how her work—developed through an international career since her move to the United States in 1988—has expanded and connected within a global artistic landscape.


5. Photography Seoul Museum of Art

The Photography Seoul Museum of Art will hold the 13th Seoul Photo Festival, 《Come Back Home》 (April). Through this exhibition, the museum resumes Seoul’s flagship photography festival, which had been temporarily suspended due to the pandemic, and explores the meaning of “home” as a space where memory, time, and identity intersect, through diverse photographic expressions.
 
Alongside the exhibition featuring more than 20 participating artists, a range of public programs—including contests, film screenings, and symposiums—will provide an open platform for audiences to experience photography from multiple perspectives and approaches.

6. Seo-Seoul Museum of Art (scheduled to open in the first half of 2026)

The Seo-Seoul Museum of Art will inaugurate its opening with a series of special exhibitions: the SeMA performance 《Breath》, the architectural archive exhibition 《Our Time Begins Here》, and the new media collection exhibition 《Transparent |Youth| Machines of Seo-Seoul》.
 
The SeMA performance 《Breath》 brings together 25 artists (and artist teams) to explore the intersections of body, art, and society through the theme of “breathing” as an organic movement, and to understand humans and the environment through media. Planned as an annual program, it will continue to support performance-based creation and experimentation through sustained reflection on time, space, and human action.
 
The architectural archive exhibition 《Our Time Begins Here》 sheds light on the significance of the construction of the Seo-Seoul Museum of Art, interpreting archival photographs of its development and stories from Seoul’s southwestern districts as memory data rooted in the bonds between people and place.
 
The final opening exhibition, the new media collection exhibition 《Transparent |Youth| Machines of Seo-Seoul》, focuses on adolescents as post-human subjects living in the contemporary moment, grounded in the identity and future vision of the Seo-Seoul Museum of Art. The exhibition will present for the first time approximately ten major large-scale works from the museum’s new media–focused collection and will be accompanied by the operation of a youth-oriented studio program.

References

• 서울시립미술관 보도자료 (Seoul Museum of Art Press Release)