Samsung Family’s Art Collection Goes on World Tour

For decades, one of the world’s most historically significant collections of Korean art has been kept largely out of public view, quietly assembled by South Korea’s richest family: Samsung’s founding patriarch, the Lee family. Now, the works are on their first-ever overseas tour, riding a global wave of interest in Korean culture that extends well beyond pop music and film into the country’s deepest artistic traditions.

Called Korean Treasures: Collected, Cherished, Shared, more than 200 works from the late Samsung Chairman Lee Kun-hee’s vast art collection opened for viewing at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art in Washington in November. Jointly organized by South Korea’s National Museum of Korea and the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, the exhibition will be traveling to Chicago in March and London’s British Museum in September.