The National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea (MMCA, Director Sunghee Kim) announced that its exhibition 《Damien Hirst: Nothing Is True But Everything Is Possible》 concluded successfully after attracting a cumulative total of more than 540,000 visitors over its 96-day run.
 
As the first solo exhibition in Asia by Damien Hirst, one of the most influential and controversial figures in contemporary art, the exhibition drew significant attention both in Korea and internationally even before its opening.
 
Bringing together Hirst's iconic works alongside key pieces spanning nearly four decades of his artistic practice, the exhibition offered the most comprehensive survey of his career to date in Asia. As a result, it set a series of new attendance and engagement records across both online and offline platforms.
 
With an average of 5,645 visitors per day and a total attendance exceeding 540,000, the exhibition surpassed the record previously set by 《Ron Mueck》 at MMCA Seoul last year, establishing a new attendance record for an exhibition at the museum.

Widely embraced by audiences across the country, 《Damien Hirst》 attracted an exceptionally young demographic. Visitors in their 20s and 30s accounted for 62% of total attendance, while teenagers made up a remarkable 12%—an unusually high figure for a contemporary art exhibition.
 
The proportion of teenage visitors was more than double the museum's typical average of around 6%, suggesting that the exhibition successfully engaged younger audiences by providing a rare opportunity to experience the work of Damien Hirst—an artist many had previously encountered only through textbooks—in the heart of Seoul.
 
The exhibition also generated widespread discussion on social media. Visitors shared comments such as, "Controversial as he may be, even as a non-expert I felt the exhibition was speaking about our lives," "I couldn't fully understand everything, but it's the kind of contemporary art that stays with you long after you've left," and "The most powerful exhibition I've seen in recent years."

At the same time, the exhibition also prompted criticism from some quarters regarding the museum's allocation of public funds and its perceived lack of new art-historical interpretation.
 
According to The Hankyoreh, more than KRW 3 billion in public funding was spent on the exhibition, which largely revisited works created two to three decades ago. The newspaper reported that approximately 70 percent of the exhibition budget was allocated to the transportation of large-scale installations, including Hirst's iconic preserved shark.
 
The article contrasted this expenditure with the museum's acquisitions budget, which has remained virtually unchanged at approximately KRW 4.8–5.2 billion over the past decade. Against the backdrop of steadily rising art market prices, the newspaper noted growing concerns that the museum's real purchasing power has continued to decline, raising broader questions about the balance between funding blockbuster exhibitions and expanding the national collection.

Some critics also argued that the exhibition fell short of reinterpreting Damien Hirst's early works from a contemporary perspective or advancing new art-historical and critical discourse around his practice.
 
Roh Hyung Suk, art critic and journalist for The Hankyoreh, commented, "Rather than simply reiterating the established interpretations of Hirst and his work that were formulated by Western museums decades ago, the exhibition should have presented a distinctive critical framework grounded in substantial research."
 
He further argued that the absence of such a curatorial framework left the museum ill-equipped to respond to protests and installations staged by domestic animal rights groups, stating that "the museum was unable to adequately explain or engage with the criticism."
 
Meanwhile, Sunghee Kim, Director of the MMCA, stated, "We will continue to present exhibitions by leading figures in contemporary art from Korea and abroad, making a wider range of contemporary art more accessible to the public."
 
While presenting landmark works by internationally renowned artists will remain a key responsibility of public museums, future exhibitions will also need to generate new readings of these works within contemporary social and cultural contexts and contribute to the development of critical discourse.

References

• 국립현대미술관 보도자료 (National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea (MMCA) Press Release)
• 한겨레, 오명 얼룩진 데이미언 허스트 전시 흥행…조롱받는 국립미술관, 2026.06.30