Lifestyle - The Korea Times

Must-see shows in Seoul during winter holidays

When the winter holidays arrive, theaters come alive with classic favorites and new productions ready to whisk audiences away to realms of fantasy, heart and spectacle. Whether you crave timeless holiday magic, high-energy musicals or a truly unconventional night out, this season offers plenty of reasons to trade a cold night out for a seat in the theater. Holiday classics The beloved ballet “The Nutcracker” is staged in various productions, highlighting its enduring charm as a holiday ballet. The Korean National Ballet presents Yuri Grigorovich’s celebrated version at the Seoul Arts Center’s Opera Theater through Dec. 25, featuring top principal dancers such as Park Seul-ki and Cho Yeon-jae. In a unique tradition, the role of the Nutcracker is performed by a child dancer chosen annually from the company’s ballet academy, rather than a wooden puppet, adding a special charm to the production. The Universal Ballet Company’s “The Nutcracker” is based on Vasili Vainonen’s Mariinsky Ballet version, which closely follows the original 1892 St. Petersburg premiere. From the eth

Dec 14, 2025By Kwon Mee-yoo

Must-see shows in Seoul during winter holidays

In company of winds, trees and dogs, Joan Jonas unveils 'more-than-human' world

Now 89, American artist Joan Jonas has watched more friends — humans and animals — depart than she can bear to count. “It occurred to me about a year ago that each person leaves an empty room when they leave my life,” she said. This year, Jonas gathered the quiet weight of those losses — the companions gone, the memories fading — and laid them bare in a single room. “Empty Rooms,” her latest installation, was unveiled at the Nam June Paik Art Center in Yongin, Gyeonggi Province. It features images of bare trees and drifting paper, intertwined under bands of light and shadow. Cream-colored paper sculptures hang in the air, glowing from within, while a doghouse sits on the floor. One wall is crowded with dozens of drawings of a leafless tree. A video loops nearby, pairing shadow play with jazz piano compositions by the artist’s longtime collaborator, Jason Moran. The installation, which weaves together the visual languages of sculpture, drawing and video that Jonas has explored since the 1960s, serves as a fitting centerpiece for “The More-than-Human World,” her first

Dec 5, 2025By Park Han-sol

In company of winds, trees and dogs, Joan Jonas unveils 'more-than-human' world

When moon jars misbehave: Korean artists twist ceramic traditions at Gladstone Seoul

Something is “off” about the moon jars at Gladstone Gallery Seoul. Not one conforms to the classical, gently swelling symmetry of their Joseon-era (1392-1910) predecessors. Some lean and sag as if sinking into the floor; others appear punctured, their rims warped and unsteady. Still others have been broken and pieced back together, their cracks left defiantly visible for all to see. In its new group exhibition, “Irreverent Forms,” three contemporary Korean artists each confront and defy the centuries-old tradition of ceramics through their own forms of organic, off-kilter imperfection. Lee Hun-chung seeks to break free from the ideal of perfect symmetry long prized in ceramics. He lets the unpredictable forces of clay, fire, water and air intervene in the work during the wheel-throwing process and inside the kiln. “We revere the moon jars of the 18th century because they embody the spirit of their time. But as an artist living in the 21st century, I began to wonder: if I were to recreate a vessel that looked identical to what our ancestors made, would people in the 23rd or 24t

Dec 3, 2025By Park Han-sol

When moon jars misbehave: Korean artists twist ceramic traditions at Gladstone Seoul

Donald Judd's furniture: Art of material honesty

American artist Donald Judd (1928-94) had one pet peeve that “drove him crazy” — the moment a material pretended to be anything other than itself. He would point to things like fiberglass made to mimic the texture of stone. For Judd, the question was disarmingly simple. “Why not just let it be fiberglass? Fiberglass is already a material. Why not use it like that?” recalled his son, Flavin Judd. That insistence on honesty in materials, Flavin suggested, reached back to the artist’s early grounding: his training in philosophy and his roots as the grandson of Midwestern farmers, where the unspoken rule was that if you set out to do something, you did it plainly, without pretense. “There’s already so much mendacity and lying in the world. Why would you add to that?” said the younger Judd, artistic director of the Judd Foundation. The idea of material clarity — of art as a “thing that is available to you immediately” — became the backbone of Donald Judd’s practice. While he began as a painter, he soon gravitated toward three-dimensional forms. His stacked rectangu

Nov 30, 2025By Park Han-sol

Donald Judd's furniture: Art of material honesty

Korean Art Odyssey Connecting the dots: Towards more integrated approaches for Korean art abroad

CHICAGO/JEJU — As global interest in Korean culture reaches new heights, museums across the world are approaching Korean institutions with unprecedented frequency, seeking joint exhibitions, research partnerships and even permanent Korean galleries. But this rush of attention has also exposed structural limits of the existing system for cultural exchanges and support for Korea-related programs. Overseas, staffing shortages, conservation gaps and short-term project cycles continue to restrict what institutions can achieve, even as demand accelerates. These challenges have formed the backdrop to Korea's reorganized support system for Korean-themed collections and galleries abroad — a structure that aims not only to streamline responsibilities, but also to answer a larger question of how to turn short-term momentum into lasting infrastructure. Korean cultural heritage began appearing in overseas exhibitions as early as the 1960s, when most exchanges were limited to museum-to-museum loans. Over the decades, the Korea Foundation, under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, helped expand these

Nov 29, 2025By Kwon Mee-yoo and Pyo Kyung-min

[Korean Art Odyssey] Connecting the dots: Towards more integrated approaches for Korean art abroad

Korean Art Odyssey Beyond K-wave: Can museums turn pop culture-driven curiosity into lasting understanding?

DENVER, Colo./WASHINGTON — For decades, the American public’s image of Korea, if it existed at all, was largely confined to the 1950-53 war and the ever-shifting tensions between the two Koreas. In less than 10 years, however, the country’s pop culture exports, buoyed by the global reach of social media, have blown open that narrow frame and sparked an entirely new curiosity. Such a shift has begun to echo across museums as well, as more institutions reopen dedicated Korean galleries, expand their collections and stage new exhibitions. Persuading a museum to take on Korean projects used to be an uphill effort, Hyonjeong Kim Han recalled. In the early years of her tenure at the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, which spanned from 2010 to 2021, whenever she proposed a Korean exhibition or cultural program, “they persistently asked what defined ‘Koreanness’ and how we could show it differently from Japan or China,” she told The Korea Times. Today, the landscape feels transformed. “It’s nothing like when I started working in this field in 2006,” said Kim Han, now senior

Nov 28, 2025By Park Han-sol

[Korean Art Odyssey] Beyond K-wave: Can museums turn pop culture-driven curiosity into lasting understanding?

Korean Art Odyssey Korea's dual mission for overseas heritage: reclaim what it can, revitalize what it can't

DENVER, Colo./DRESDEN, Germany — For decades, many museums in Europe and the United States devoted themselves to filling their halls with the world’s most prized antiquities. These fervent acquisition campaigns meant a tide of works were brought in from nations that had been exploited by colonization and war. Today, those same institutions find themselves at a moment of reckoning. Questions of ethical stewardship and problematic provenance now press upon them, prompting growing international calls to return objects that were forcibly removed from their place of origin. Korea, too, bears its own scars of loss. Japan’s 1910-45 colonial rule and the 1950-53 Korean War forced many cultural treasures to leave their homeland. What seems to distinguish Korea’s response, however, is its unusually centralized approach. The task of tracking, research and strategic planning for overseas artifacts is not scattered across separate entities but is instead entrusted to a single organization: the Overseas Korean Cultural Heritage Foundation (OKCHF). Established in 2012, the year following the hi

Nov 24, 2025By Park Han-sol and Kwon Mee-yoo

[Korean Art Odyssey] Korea's dual mission for overseas heritage: reclaim what it can, revitalize what it can't

PHOTOS Islamic art at National Museum of Korea

A pair of mosque lamps from the Mamluk Dynasty that ruled Egypt and surrounding regions between the mid-13th and early 16th centuries are on display at the National Museum of Korea's newly established Islamic Art Gallery, Friday. The gallery's opening is marked by the inaugural exhibition, "Islamic Art: A Journey of Splendor," co-organized with the Museum of Islamic Art in Doha, Qatar. Yonhap

Nov 21, 2025By Park Han-sol

[PHOTOS] Islamic art at National Museum of Korea

Kim Whan-ki's 1971 painting fetches $8.4 mil. at auction, second-highest for Korean art

A 1971 dot painting by Korean abstract master Kim Whan-ki (1913-1974) has sold for $8.4 million at a Christie's auction held in New York, achieving the second-highest auction price ever for a Korean artwork. The painting, "19-VI-71 #206," measuring 254 by 203 centimeters, was sold during Christie's 20th Century Evening Sale on Monday. With the auction fee included, the final price exceeds $10.29 million. Christie's described the piece as "the zenith of Korean modern abstraction, embodying the purest and most transcendent ideals of art." According to the Whanki Museum in Seoul, the artwork was created while Kim was living in the city, a period when "his search for the essence of nature evolved into a most pristine and complete form of abstraction." The late abstract pioneer also holds the record for the most expensive Korean artwork ever sold at auction. His monumental 1971 blue-dot painting, "Universe 05-IV-71 #200," fetched approximately $11.3 million at a Christie's Hong Kong auction in November 2019.

Nov 18, 2025By Yonhap

Kim Whan-ki's 1971 painting fetches $8.4 mil. at auction, second-highest for Korean art

Adoptee artist Henrik Uldalen explores identity, acceptance through raw portraits

Born in Seoul in December 1986, Henrik Uldalen was adopted by a Norwegian couple when he was just a few months old. He grew up in Asker, a small town outside Oslo, with what he describes as a “loving family” of parents and two siblings as well as friends. A quiet child, he found refuge in drawing and once imagined becoming an art teacher. Instead, he became an artist and settled in London about a decade ago. For most of his life, he focused on blending into the communities around him. “I spent the majority of my life up until last year actively avoiding conversations about adoption,” he recalled in an interview with The Korea Times on Nov. 12. “I shut down any attempt from my parents to talk about Korea and learn more about my life there.” Uldalen just “wanted to be a ‘normal’ Norwegian.” “But over the years, it became clear that many things in my life directly correlated with refusing my true self — a lack of belonging anywhere, rootlessness, and biological and physical differences from Norwegians and most Westerners.” That changed last year, when Whitestone Gall

Nov 18, 2025By Kim Se-jeong

Arts & Theater