InterviewSeoul 'natural' fit for first-ever MoMA Bookstore

Sarah Suzuki, MoMA's associate director, right, and CFO Daniel Perez stand inside the first-ever MoMA Bookstore, which opened Tuesday in Seoul's Gangnam District. Courtesy of Hyundai Card

In the restless tide of Seoul’s Gangnam District, a new venue peeks out like a jewel on the sidewalk, its face split between two worlds. To the left, a honeycomb of golden shelves brims with design objects and whimsical curiosities; to the right, a sleek white chamber presents art books with the quiet precision of a gallery.

This is MoMA Bookstore — the first of its kind in the world from New York’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA).

While MoMA Design Stores have already taken root in New York and Japan, this is the museum’s first dedicated bookstore, where visitors can find a trove of eye-catching objects alongside more than 200 MoMA-published titles, from exhibition catalogues to graphic works.

The front of MoMA Bookstore in southern Seoul / Courtesy of Hyundai Card

Why Seoul, of all places?

According to Sarah Suzuki, the museum’s associate director, the city’s fertile cultural landscape is hard to overlook.

“When I come to Seoul, I always go around to a lot of museums, galleries and cultural spaces. To see those spaces so vibrant, so full of visitors of all different ages really engaging with what’s on view, it’s really special,” she told The Korea Times last week at the bookshop, as last-minute adjustments were being made ahead of its official opening.

“What I’ve perceived is a tremendous enthusiasm about all that culture of experimentation and intellectual curiosity that comes with the space of the museum.”

For MoMA, weaving itself into this urban fabric felt “natural,” added CFO Daniel Perez. “We’ve seen double-digit growth in Korean visitation to our museum over the last few years,” he noted, with the last fiscal year welcoming record numbers from Korea.

Visitors crowd the fourth edition of Frieze Seoul at Coex, which ran from Sept. 3 to 6. Yonhap

The bookstore’s official opening on Tuesday arrives during a month when the pulse of the Korean capital seems to quicken with art and culture, marked by Seoul Art Week and the return of the mega fair Frieze Seoul.

“It’s a happy coincidence, but one that is not an accident,” Suzuki said with a smile. “It just seemed like a really opportune moment, when Seoul is the focus of the global art world.”

Equally vital in bringing MoMA Bookstore to life was the museum’s partnership with Hyundai Card, which celebrates its 20th anniversary next year. It was, in fact, the idea of Hyundai Card CEO Ted Chung to place the world’s first MoMA Bookstore — rather than another Design Store — in the heart of Seoul.

Korean art initiatives at MoMA

Over the past two decades, the partnership between MoMA and Hyundai Card has taken many forms, from exhibition sponsorships to curatorial exchanges. This has helped shape the New York museum’s understanding of Korean art and carry that insight to its nearly 2.7 million annual visitors.

One result has been solo exhibitions of major contemporary Korean artists, including Haegue Yang and Kim Sung-hwan, both staged as part of a new strand of programming known as The Hyundai Card Performance Series.

“Oftentimes when you go to a museum, if you see live art or performance, it’s tucked away in an auditorium, a basement theater, or scheduled after hours. The idea with the series was really to make live art and performance inescapable in your visit … because it’s a critical part of the story of modern and contemporary art,” Suzuki explained.

Installation view of "Haegue Yang: Handles," held from October 2019 to February 2021 at MoMA / Courtesy of Museum of Modern Art, New York

This November, genre-defying media artist Ayoung Kim will make her U.S. solo debut with her celebrated “Delivery Dancer” series at MoMA PS1, a space dedicated to championing experimental practices and boundary-pushing ideas.

“She’s someone who’s using technology in such a compelling way. She’s really at the forefront of thinking about how to use game engines and AI, and at the same time, she’s an amazing storyteller,” the associate director said, citing Kim’s ability to harness new tools to deepen her practice, rather than using them for the sake of novelty.

The contemporary art landscape in Korea is remarkably organic, Suzuki added, alive with creatives who reach back into premodern or artisanal traditions and reimagine them through the lens of 21st century practices and the tools of today.

“Generally, in places with such strong artistic traditions, artists both want to embrace and push against [them]. How do you respect, acknowledge and metabolize that long and illustrious history? And how, in this moment, do you also do something new with it, say something different with it?”

A scene from Ayoung Kim's "Delivery Dancer's Arc: Inverse" (2024) / Courtesy of the artist and Asia Culture Center

It is this landscape that MoMA’s curators have been discovering through the curatorial exchange program launched last year, which she describes as “an opportunity to be immersed in a scene: to get to know galleries and their programs, meet artists, do studio visits and engage in conversation with people outside your own backyard.”

Over the past 18 months, seven curators have traveled to Korea, moving through its institutions like the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Asia Culture Center, Nam June Paik Art Center and Whanki Museum.

Through their encounter with creatives across disciplines — from Ayoung Kim and experimental veteran Sung Neung-kyung to “hanji” artist Chun Kwang-young and the collaborative duo Moon Kyung-won and Jeon Joon-ho — the museum has gained new acquisitions and shaped the vision of Kim’s November solo show.

A view inside MoMA Bookstore in southern Seoul / Courtesy of Hyundai Card

Also on the horizon is the Korean Art edition of MoMA’s research publication series, “Primary Documents,” slated for release in 2027.

The “Primary Documents” volumes are collated compendiums for English-language readers, bringing together key source texts on modern and contemporary art from regions outside the U.S. in meticulously edited translations.

“The idea is to create a primer, if you will — an opportunity to read in translation those critical texts that reveal how a moment, a movement or an artist developed,” Suzuki explained. “It opens up fields of study that can otherwise be hard to access. This then allows that work to be brought into other conversations.”

This means that such texts can inform future exhibitions or inspire new dissertations. “So it does start in an academic and scholarly space, but I think it can ripple out in so many ways from there,” she said.

A view inside MoMA Bookstore in southern Seoul / Courtesy of Hyundai Card

Before ending the interview, the two were asked what single book they would recommend to Korean visitors stepping into the new bookstore. What, in their view, offers a good glimpse of what MoMA has to offer?

For Perez, the choice was “MoMA Now,” published in 2019.

“It features 375 works from the collection that span about 200 years and artists from all over the world,” he said. “Together, they begin to tell the story of the Museum of Modern Art.”

Suzuki, however, pointed to an entire series: “One on One.”

Each slim volume takes a single artist’s work as its touchstone — a meditation designed to be read in one sitting.

“One artist, one work. It’s like an invitation to spend 10 minutes looking at one piece of art. Nobody does this; it feels too long. But there is so much to think about in just one work. In a way, these books are like a guide to that [deeper looking].”