© British Museum
© British Museum
Korea
1 October 2026 to 31 January 2027
Critic score
The most comprehensive survey of Korean art in Europe for over 40 years, spanning 300 BC to today and including 23 National Treasures and Treasures.
From British Museum
Discover 2,000 years of Korean creativity – through works spanning from around 300 BC to the present day. Featuring outstanding examples of sculpture, painting and decorative arts over two millennia – up to the present day – the exhibition presents the most comprehensive chronological survey of Korean visual and material culture seen in Europe for over 40 years. This major exhibition draws almost exclusively from the 23,000 works bequeathed in 2021 by the late Samsung Chairman Lee Kun-...
Read more at British Museum →Critic Reviews (4)
The Guardian
Jonathan Jones
A nirvana of wild beauty shattered by the 20th century
"And then the spell is broken. The show shifts forward suddenly, brutally, into some so-so early 20th-century Korean art. Modern pastiches of traditional art mix awkwardly with European and American-style modernism from the 1900s to 1950s."
Read full review →The Standard
Martin Robinson
A dazzling, soulful trip through the history of nation
"In fact, this exhibition shows that K-Pop is just the latest aspect of a long heritage of creative world-beating. The tragedy of the North, is in not just being cut off from the world, but its own extraordinary cultural history."
Read full review →The Telegraph
Alastair Sooke
Korea's enthralling history proves too big
"By the end, I was hankering for a show that didn't try to do it all but concentrated instead on a specific period of Korean history. This isn't a bad exhibition, by any means, but it does feel dutiful. It should have been enthralling."
Read full review →The Times
Laura Freeman
Ancient bling meets KPop Demon Hunters
"It would have to go some to outperform the star and this show doesn’t quite do it. There are objects of astonishing beauty on display, but the trouble with these British Museum shows whisking you through a couple of thousand years of history is that the storytelling can only ever be whistlestop and cursory."
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Bloomsbury, London·View on artmap
