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<\/p>\nSeoul\u2019s new Centre Pompidou Hanwha is due to open to the public on 4 June: it marks the Pompidou\u2019s second branch in Asia following a collaboration with Shanghai\u2019s West Bund Museum that launched in 2019. Pompidou also announced this month a multi-year strategic partnership with Hong Kong institution M+.<\/p>\n
Centre Pompidou Hanwha will operate as a four-year partnership between the Hanwha Foundation of Culture and the Centre Pompidou. Two exhibitions per year from the Centre Pompidou\u2019s collection will tour to South Korea, starting with The Cubists: Inventing Modern Vision (until 4 October).<\/p>\n
Centre Pompidou\u2019s \u201cspirit of interdisciplinarity and contemporaneity strongly aligns with the Hanwha Foundation of Culture\u2019s mission, since 2007, to support emerging artists and connect Korean culture with the world,\u201d a spokesperson for the foundation tells The Art Newspaper. They add that the collaboration is \u201cnot intended as a one-way introduction of Western art, but as a reciprocal exchange in which Korean and Asian art can generate new interpretations and questions within global art discourse.\u201d<\/p>\n
The new museum, which French President Emmanuel Macron toured on 3 April, occupies 11,000 sq. m over four floors of the Korean conglomerate Hanwha Group\u2019s headquarters, 63 Building\u2014Korea\u2019s highest building until 2003. Of the two main exhibition halls, each around 1,600 sq. m, one gallery will present early 20th-century European art from the Centre Pompidou collection, the Hanwha Foundation spokesperson says. The other will exhibit global contemporary art with a 21st-century Korean focus, curated in-house. The inaugural Korea Focus section brings local context to Western Cubism through artists such as Kim Whanki and Yoo Youngkuk.<\/p>\n
The show\u2019s 90-plus works by 40 artists will explore the full Cubist movement \u201cas a collective experiment shaped by a wider artistic community responding to rapid social and cultural change,\u201d the spokesperson says. It aims to provide attention to historically sidelined female artists including Sonia Delaunay, Natalia Goncharova, Suzanne Duchamp and Mar\u00eda Blanchard, \u201cpresenting them not as peripheral figures but as original contributors to a new visual language\u201d.<\/p>\n
The Pompidou Centre in Paris, which closed in September 2025 for five years, is mounting a series of exhibitions at locations in France and abroad during this period.<\/p>\n
Strengthening ties<\/p>\n
\u201cThe opening of Centre Pompidou Hanwha in Seoul, which coincides with the 140th anniversary of diplomatic relations between France and the Republic of Korea, fits perfectly into this dynamic,\u201d a spokesperson for the Pompidou says. \u201cThis opening will allow us to strengthen ties with Korean audiences and artistic communities.\u201d The museum \u201cis not a copy-paste of the Paris museum, but rather a true collaboration tailor-made with our Korean partners and stakeholders, to create a cultural offering that will be fine-tuned to the local audience\u201d, the spokesperson adds.<\/p>\n
The Hanwha Foundation declined to comment on reports that Hanhwa is paying Centre Pompidou around $21m over four years. The reports that the foundation is spending on European loans instead of supporting Korean talent has sparked some controversy domestically, while Hanwha Group\u2019s ties to the Israeli and American militaries have attracted global criticism.<\/p>\n
Chung Joonmo, a cultural policy specialist who was previously the chief curator of Korea\u2019s National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, applauds Centre Pompidou Hanwha\u2019s mission but fears that \u201cby relying on the \u2018Pompidou\u2019 brand to draw audiences, we risk turning the Korean art scene into a passive conduit for consuming Western masterpieces\u2014a kind of cultural dependency. My concern is more about what comes after; given the tendency of Korean corporations to follow each other\u2019s lead, I worry that once Hanhwa launches Pompidou Seoul, other companies will scramble to bring in their own museum branches from abroad.\u201d<\/p>\n
Last year the city of Busan signed its own memorandum of understanding (MOU) with Centre Pompidou for a branch to open in 2031, but faces public protest over the ecological impact of the 15,000 sq. m building at Igidae\u00a0Park and the 108.3 billion won ($78m) public price tag. London\u2019s Victoria & Albert Museum is reported to have in January signed an MOU with Seoul\u2019s Dongjak\u00a0district to open a branch there.<\/p>\n
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Seoul is becoming a destination for overseas art institutions, with Centre Pompidou Hanwha leading the charge \u00a9 JinChang<\/p>\n
\u201cWithin Korea\u2019s art scene, the general view is that the Pompidou licensing model is a highly wasteful use of resources, and that there are many better alternatives,\u201d Chung says.<\/p>\n