Seoul’s Centre Pompidou, Set to Open in June, Reveals Inaugural Programme

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Seoul’s museum scene will expand this June with the opening of Centre Pompidou Hanwha, a collaboration between the Pompidou Centre in Paris and South Korea’s Hanwha Foundation of Culture.

Housed in a former aquarium redesigned by French architect Jean-Michel Wilmotte, the four-story building is a luminous “box of light” featuring two 1,500 square-metre galleries. The space’s translucent exterior evokes traditional Korean roof tiles while flooding the space with natural light. 

“A museum is not just the building that houses it; it embodies a spirit, a set of values and skills that can be shared worldwide,” Laurent Le Bon, president of the Pompidou Centre, said in a statement.

“This international dimension is essential to the identity of the Centre Pompidou, and the opening of Centre Pompidou Hanwha represents both an important milestone in our history and an unprecedented opportunity for exchange with new audiences and the prolific Korean cultural scene.” 

The museum is designed as a platform for 20th-century modernism, while also fostering contemporary Korean art. During its first four years, the space will stage two major collection-based exhibitions annually, alongside exhibitions highlighting contemporary local practices.

Presented across both the museum’s galleries, its opening event, The Cubists: Inventing Modern Vision, will draw from the Pompidou Centre’s collection to trace the emergence and global spread of Cubism.

The show will feature works by Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, and will include a special section examining Cubism’s intersections with Korean modernism in visual art, literature and performance.

Subsequent programming will spotlight key movements and figures of early modern art, including Marc Chagall, Wassily Kandinsky, Henri Matisse and Fauvism. This will be followed by a focus on Surrealism, and then abstraction, with attention to women artists historically underrepresented in these narratives.

A major retrospective of Constantin Brâncusi—the first of its scale in Korea—is also planned, alongside exhibitions exploring early digital art and artificial intelligence.

Sungsoo Lee, president of the Hanwha Foundation of Culture, said: “Centre Pompidou Hanwha will be an open museum where art, technology, and the future converge, offering a new way to encounter world-class modern and contemporary art in the heart of daily life in Seoul.” 

The Hanwha Group, the parent company of the philanthropic Hanwha Foundation, has previously drawn international criticism for its ties to Israeli arms firms and business dealings linked to the Israeli Defence Forces.

The opening of the Seoul space coincides with the Pompidou Centre’s ongoing renovations in Paris, which will continue until 2030. 

Its collection continues to circulate internationally via the Constellation programme, which includes Shanghai’s West Bund Museum, Brussels’s Kanal–Centre Pompidou, and the forthcoming Centre Pompidou x Paraná in Brazil. Plans for a Jersey City outpost have, however, been scrapped.