SeMA - SeMA Collection

Collection & Art Research
SeMA Collection

Browse 6,158 artworks from Korea and overseas.

Collection Highlights

Seed Face 8
Jung Jung yeob
2011

SeMA Collection 200

“SeMA Collection 200” displays 200 artworks owned by the museum. In 2015, when the number of artworks owned by the museum exceeded 4,500 pieces, the Seoul Museum of Art selected 200 artists and named the resulting collection “Collection Highlights.” “SeMA Collection 200” is organized according to the SeMA artists’ working periods, which range from the 1940s to the 2010s. Viewers are able to observe the evolving trends in Korean Modern and contemporary art and better understand SeMA’s collection with the help of researchers, both internal and external, who provide descriptions of the artists and their artworks.

GanaArt Collection

The GanaArt Collection comprises 200 artworks donated by GanaArt Founder Lee Ho-jae. The collection reflects social realities during the 1970s through the 1990s. Among these, more than 160 works were produced by Korean artists who actively pursued “Minjung Art” (“People’s Art”), which is recognized as one of the art movements that most fiercely expressed the circumstances of its era within the history of Korean contemporary art. Viewers are able to fully understand the GanaArt Collection with the help of researchers, both internal and external, who provide descriptions of the artists and their artworks.

Chun Kyung-ja Collection

The Chun Kyung-ja Collection comprises 93 works produced over a 60-year period from the 1940s to the 1990s that the late artist personally selected and donated to the museum in 1998. The artist intended for this collection to be a retrospective of her body of work. Chun Kyung-ja achieved unprecedented heights as a painter in the Korean art field during the post-liberation era. Today, viewers can appreciate and understand the imaginative world of the acclaimed artist Chun Kyung-ja through her favorite subject matter, including flowers, butterflies, snakes, female figures, dogs, and travel, which the artist aptly juxtaposed to express her autobiographical and vibrant emotions.

Choi Min Collection

The Seoul Museum of Art (SeMA) received a donation of artworks and archives collected by Choi Min (1944-2018), a professor emeritus at the Korea National University of Arts, who was also an art critic, translator, and poet. The collection, gifted in 2019, consists of 161 works by 25 artists, which allows viewers to explore Professor Choi’s life as an art critic and collector. In particular, Professor Choi Min devoted himself to the comparative study of Realism in contemporary video art and painting between Korea and the West. Therefore, the Choi Min Collection, along with the GanaArt Collection, forms one important axis of the SeMA collection that expands understanding and research on Korean Realism from the 1980s to 2000s. The supplemental materials donated with the artworks can be found at the SeMA Archive.

Kim In-soon Collection

The Kim In Soon Collection traces the development of Korean feminist art through works corresponding to critical moments within Korea’s feminist history. Grounded in the aesthetics of realism and social realism, she aimed to transform society by advocating women’s liberation and giving prominence to the value of women. In her quest, she sought to discover a life-affirming beauty that could fuel societal change. In 2020, Kim In Soon donated 106 pieces of her work from her Yangpyeong studio to the Seoul Museum of Art to support the study of Korean feminist art and the preservation of art historical records. This collection includes 96 of her own works, and 10 collaborative banners created by the women’s groups engaging the women’s movement during the 1980s and 1990s: The Women’s Art Research Society(1986-95), The women’s art group Dungji (1987–89), Unggungkwi(1988-90), The Labor Art Committee(1990-).

New Collection

A Wall-I Han, Un-Sung 1989

Four Tomatoes Han, Un-Sung 2007

THE TUMBLE Chan Sook Choi 2023

Four Persimmons Han, Un-Sung 2007

See More(263)

ha cha youn(1)

kyung jin Park(1)

melanie bonajo(1)

김혜숙b(1954)(1)

용해숙(2)

More than 34 percent of the SeMA Collection is made up of gifts of art, and the Seoul Museum of Art accepts your gifts of art with gratitude.

If you wish to make gifts of art to the Seoul Museum of Art, please contact the staff in charge below.
- A Staff in charge of gifts of art: Minkyung Yoo (02-2124-8964)

To begin the process for donating work of art to the Seoul Museum of Art is as follows:
- Please submit a making gifts of art application with the biographical information about the artists, materials information on the artwork. In addition, a high-quality photograph of the work must be submitted.
- Send the application to the address below; A Staff in charge of Gifts of art, Seoul Museum of Art, 61 Deoksugung-gil, Jung-gu, Seoul

Step 1 Submission of making gifts of art application: Once an application for gifts is submitted to SeMA, the curator overseeing acquisitions in the Collection & Research Division reviews the proposed gifts.
Step 2 Holding the Meeting for Gifts Screening: The Director and Chief Curators are able to decide which gifts of art proposed to the Museum should be recommended for acceptance and which should be rejected.
Step 3 Holding the Gifts Acceptance Committee Meeting: Works recommended for acquisition by gifts must be approved by the Gifts Acceptance Committee.
Step 4 Holding the Valuation Committee Meeting: The pricing of works approved in Step 3 must be evaluated by the Evaluation Committee.
Step 5 Reporting to the SeMA Executive Committee: All the results by Step3 and 4 must be reported to the SeMA Executive Committee.
Step 6 Announcing the Approval of Gifts of Art: Making an agreement for making gifts of art; transporting the donated work(s) into the Museum; and issuing the certification of gifts of art

Download the Making Gifts of Art Application Form & Document.hwp