Aug 20, 2011

National Museum of Korea

The National Museum of Korea has a free permanent collection that consists of mainly items related to the history of Korea. On the main floor, the visit begins from the prehistoric fossils and moves along the timeline of Korean history illustrating each different era. On the second floor, one half of the floor concentrates on paintings and caligraphy. The other half is dedicated to collections donated from some famous people (I guess... as I don't know them). On the third floor, there are halls with some artifacts from other major Asian cultures and more specific halls of sculptures and crafts.
Even though the museum is free and so there were lots of people with children, it was not unbearable. But I did walk a lot. All the people usually stays on the main floor and the place where it were the most crowded was the cafeteria. Indeed, we're in Asia. Food comes before anything in our culture :)

 Main entrance and the central alley

 Ancient tiles. The oldest one (left bottom) is from 300 BC.

There is an entire section dedicated to the art related to Buddha. Lots of sulptures, bronze arts and paintings.

 Sculpted Buddhas

Sometimes when you see these huge stones brought in museums, it feels not right for them to have move these treasures. But then, selfishly, I also think "wow, that's cool to get to see
them in air conditioned comfort". Because chances are to get to see these kinds of things, one would have to climb high in the mountain.

Pensive Bodhisattvas. Left side is the national treasure n°78.

 
Painted hanging scroll of 995cm high.

And to finish, some ceramics.

 Water droppers : dragon, frog shaped, peach shaped and unicorn lion shaped.
 Jars: very simple almost modern to the pomegranate shaped
Vases: painted rope design (also a national treasure), painted flowers,
flattened sculptured.

You can get all the info about the museum on their website here.


1 comments:

Danidan said...

Merci, très intéressant comme toujours.

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