The History of Korean Art Archives

Seoul Museum of Art Archives (SeMA AA) was established to document and preserve the flow of Korean contemporary art since the 1950s. In addition to artworks, it handles a wide range of materials that capture the context of creation—such as artists’ notebooks, catalogues, and interviews—bringing together significant moments in the history of Korean contemporary art in one place. Situated at the foot of Bukhansan Mountain, in a neighborhood long shared by artists’ studios and small galleries, it serves as a hub for documentation and collection while preserving the history and texture of its surroundings.

Unlike a conventional art museum that primarily exhibits completed works, this place places the creative process at its core. Visitors follow the trail of ideas, sketches, and records that began at the artist’s fingertips, encountering the time and stories embedded within each work step by step.

A representative example is the Seoul Museum of Art Kim Yong-Ik Archive Collection. Spanning the artist’s entire career from the 1970s to 2021, the collection comprises over 1,000 items, including handwritten manuscripts, early drawings, and rough sketches—preserving the traces of creation in their entirety. Through these records, visitors can fully engage with the thoughts behind the works and the personal time of the artist.

The building is divided into three wings: the Learning Wing, the Sharing Wing, and the Gathering Wing. The Learning and Sharing Wings serve as community spaces that connect art and daily life through lectures, programs, and a cafeteria. The largest, the Gathering Wing, is dedicated to the preservation, research, and exhibition of the archives. On the first floor of the Gathering Wing, the Reference Library houses over 57,000 early resources on Korean art history and a curated selection of books, all of which have been digitized for unrestricted public access. Once limited to specialists, these resources are now open to the public, symbolizing the bridging of information gaps in the art world and the broad dissemination of artistic value. For some, the Seoul Museum of Art Archives is a research room; for others, it is a library; and for yet others, it is a place of rest. It is a space where one can momentarily step away from the pace of the city to experience moments of reflection—a special place where art and life naturally intersect.