Sejong Museum of Art:
Beyond Impressionism

Beyond Impressionism, at the Sejong Museum of Art in central Seoul, brings together European modern paintings from the late nineteenth to the early and mid-twentieth centuries, collected by the Detroit Institute of Arts. The exhibition moves from Impressionism through Symbolism, Fauvism, Expressionism and Cubism to the School of Paris artists working in the city in the early twentieth century.

European Modern Art Collected by an American Industrial City

Founded in 1885, the Detroit Institute of Arts, or DIA, is one of the larger art museums in the United States, with more than 65,000 works. According to the DIA's account, many of the artists represented in this exhibition entered the collection during William Valentiner's directorship, from 1924 to 1945. Working with Detroit patrons including Edsel Ford, Henry Ford's son, Valentiner helped build the museum's holdings of European modern painting. For an American public collection in the 1920s and 1930s, embracing this European modernism seems to have been a fairly adventurous choice.

Following the Course of Modern Painting

The Rome exhibition introduction and the DIA's account of the Rome show describe an exhibition tracing the different directions European modern painting took after Impressionism. Following the Impressionists' interest in light and modern life, Post-Impressionist and early twentieth-century painting gave greater weight to the structure of form, colour's independence, emotional expression and the combination of multiple viewpoints. Cézanne's mountains and bathers, Van Gogh's landscapes and still lifes, and the works of Matisse and Picasso are presented as part of that progression towards the experiments of early twentieth-century Paris.

Following the Exhibition on Tour

I often find more enjoyment in looking into these background stories. Following the sources after my visit, I found what appears to be an earlier touring exhibition of 52 European modern paintings from the DIA, about a decade ago. The 2016 show at the Osaka City Museum of Fine Arts has a surviving PDF checklist. Comparing it with the current Rome and Seoul selection, 41 of the 52 works appear to be the same, with eleven changed.

The exhibition design seems to have travelled too. The photographs from Rome show strong wall colours and distinct sections; I found a similar use of colour and divisions in Seoul.

The 52 Works in the 2025-2026 Rome and Seoul Exhibitions

I have not yet found an official checklist for the Seoul exhibition on a public webpage. I put the list below together from memory and several sources. There may be omissions or works I have misidentified.

Together with Collectors of Light at the National Museum of Korea, centred on the Met's Robert Lehman Collection, and the Cubist works in the recent opening exhibition at Centre Pompidou Hanwha, this has been a rather good run of exhibitions. Under well-judged lighting, there are moments when an Impressionist painting seems to come alive, almost as though the image were on a luminous display. Starting with that sense of light and colour, the exhibition lets me follow a gradual shift towards something more elusive, increasingly overlapping with the world of modern visual design.

Where

Sejong Museum of Art 1 and 2, Sejong Center for the Performing Arts, Seoul

Exhibition

Beyond Impressionism
28 May - 23 August 2026

Hours

Daily, 10:00-19:00; no closing days

Ticket

Standard adult admission: KRW 23,000 (about US$17)

The dollar equivalent uses the Federal Reserve's 23 October 2026 rate of KRW 1,325.06 to US$1, as a guide to scale.