On Saturday afternoon, we took the subway to visit the Seoul Arts Center. On a hillside between the Nambu Ring Road and a small mountain called Umyeonsan (290 meter/950 feet elevation) was an entire complex of buildings devoted to the fine arts. The Seoul Arts Center included two art museums (one of which was featuring an exhibition on twenty years of Pixar animation in Korea), an opera house, an orchestra hall (where we stopped for a cold drink and watched members of a choral group arriving for a dress rehearsal), and a museum devoted to calligraphy, all organized around a large outdoor mall. Next to this was the National Center for Traditional Korean Performing Arts, where we visited the Museum of Traditional Korean Music and watched a performance of gugak, traditional Korean music.
These photos are copyright © 2008 Kenneth E. Harker. All rights reserved.
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This is the Seoul Calligraphy Art Museum, with part of Mount Umyeonsan behind it. We didn't visit this museum. |
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The National Center for Korean Traditional Performing Arts was uphill from the subway station at the Nambu Bus Terminal. Traditional Korean music is known as gugak in Korean. |
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Umyeondang, the main performance hall at the National Center for Korean Traditional Performing Arts. We attended an hour long gugak concert here that included folk dancers and musicians on traditional instruments such as the ajaeng, geomungo, gayageum, haegeum, daegeum, and (my favorite) the saehwang. |
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A view down the mall on which all the museums and performance halls were arranged. In the foreground on the left was Yaekdang, part of the National Center for the Korean Traditional Performing Arts. Beyond it on the left was the Music Hall of the Seould Arts Center. The round roof in the distant center sits atop the Opera House and is designed to resemble a traditional horsehair ceremonial hat. The building on the right is the Seoul Calligraphy Art Museum. |
| Last Updated 1 August 2018 |