The Seoul Museum of Art announced the closing of 《Yoo Youngkuk: A Mountain Within Me》, the inaugural exhibition in its 2026 “Korean Modern Masters” series, after attracting a total of 457,082 visitors.
 
The exhibition welcomed an average of 3,242 visitors per day over its 141-day run. Its total attendance marks a record for free exhibitions at the Seoul Museum of Art, surpassing the 2023 exhibition 《Edward Hopper: From City to Coast》 by more than 120,000 visitors.
 
As the first installment of the museum’s newly launched “Korean Modern Masters” series, 《Yoo Youngkuk: A Mountain Within Me》 is notable for shifting the focus away from large-scale exhibitions centered on internationally renowned artists and bringing renewed attention to a major figure in Korean modern art, drawing interest from a broad audience.

Organized to mark the 110th anniversary of the birth of Yoo Youngkuk (1916–2002), a leading figure in Korean abstract art, the exhibition was the largest retrospective of his work to date.
 
It surveyed his artistic practice through approximately 170 works and archival materials, including paintings, photographs, drawings, and archival documents, spanning his avant-garde experiments in the 1930s to his final painting, completed in 1999.
 
In a visitor satisfaction survey conducted by the Seoul Museum of Art, the exhibition received a score of 95.6 out of 100, the highest rating among exhibitions held at the museum’s main and branch locations over the past three years.
 
It also broadened the museum’s traditionally younger audience, largely in their 20s and 30s, to include middle-aged and older visitors. Attracting visitors from outside Seoul as well, the exhibition established itself as a cultural event that resonated across generations and regions.

During the exhibition, more than 1,000 people participated in nine sessions of a special academic symposium and the “Yoo Youngkuk+” program, which drew considerable interest, with major programs reaching capacity well in advance.
 
In particular, the special symposium “The Boundaries of Abstraction – Re-reading Yoo Youngkuk”, co-hosted by the Seoul Museum of Art and the Association of Korean Modern and Contemporary Art History last May, revisited Yoo Youngkuk and Korean abstract art from an art-historical perspective, laying the groundwork for further research.
 
Eun-ju Choi, director of the Seoul Museum of Art, said, “We are deeply grateful for the enthusiastic interest and support shown by more than 450,000 visitors for the artistic world of Yoo Youngkuk, a leading figure in Korean abstract art.”
 
She added, “We will continue to present diverse, high-quality exhibitions that offer new possibilities and warm comfort in the lives of our citizens.”

References

• 서울시립미술관 보도자료 (Seoul Museum of Art Press Release)