The Centre Pompidou Hanwha will open in Seoul this June after three years of construction. The museum, spanning 10,000 square meters across four floors, will be located inside the 63 Building in Yeouido, the Korean capital’s finance and media district.
A press release distributed by the museum explained that the building, which once housed an aquarium, has been reconfigured to become a “a true ‘box of light.’” Each floor of the museum will be cast in natural light during the day and take in the city lights at night. The museum has leased the space on a four-year renewable contract.
For its first four years, the museum will stage two exhibitions annually that tap into Centre Pompidou’s collection in Paris. Meanwhile, another series of exhibitions will focus exclusively on contemporary Korean artists. By pairing these parallel exhibition schedules, the museum intends to foster international connections between the European and Korean art worlds.
The inaugural exhibition, “The Cubists: Inventing Modern Vision,” will open on June 4th. Some of the featured artists include Pablo Picasso, Wassily Kandinsky, Henri Matisse, and Marc Chagall. In line with its exhibition program structure, the museum will simultaneously host the “Korea Focus” section, which will draw connections between Western Cubism and Korean art.
Despite the Centre Pompidou’s closure for renovations from 2025 to 20230, the museum has recently ramped up its international collaborations. It now runs museums in Malagá, Spain, and Shanghai, the latter of which is on a five-year renewable collaboration. Meanwhile, the Centre Pompidou Francilien—Fabrique de l’Art will also open later this year in Massy, a suburb of Paris. The space which opens in Autumn is designed as a conservation center and a “model for innovative arts institutions.
“A museum cannot be summed up by the building that houses it, but is embodied by a spirit, a set of values and expertise that can be shared worldwide,” Laurent Le Bon, president of Centre Pompidou, told The Korea Heraldin March.
