The National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Gwacheon, Gyeonggi Province, has opened a major exhibition featuring 44 works by 33 international masters from its collection. The show, titled "Highlights of MMCA Global Art Collection" in English and "Water Lily and Chandelier" in Korean, presents works by renowned artists including Claude Monet, Pierre-Auguste Renoir, Marcel Duchamp, Andy Warhol, and Niki de Saint Phalle.
The exhibition's Korean title, "Water Lily and Chandelier," draws from two key works that anchor the show: Monet's "The Water-Lily Pond" (1917-20) and Ai Weiwei's "Black Chandelier" (2017-21). Monet's water lilies, painted in his famous Giverny garden in 1920, showcase the French Impressionist master's continued experimentation with light effects even as cataracts affected his vision in his final years. The painting represents his lifelong fascination with capturing fleeting moments of natural beauty.
In stark contrast, Ai Weiwei's chandelier offers a contemporary commentary on censorship and political oppression. The Chinese dissident artist's glass-and-metal creation is painted in light-absorbing black, stripping it of its traditional illuminating function. The chandelier incorporates skulls, organs, and river crabs – the latter being particularly significant as "hexie," the Chinese word for river crab, is a homophone for a Communist Party slogan, making the work's political message unmistakably clear.
The exhibition encourages visitors to draw connections across different time periods and geographical regions. Marcel Duchamp's conceptual piece "Box in a Valise (From or by Marcel Duchamp or Rrose Selavy)" features a traveling bag containing approximately 60 miniature replicas of his ready-mades and paintings, functioning as a portable gallery that can be opened anywhere at any time. This exploration of originality and reproduction connects with other artists in the show who transformed mass media images into singular artworks, including John Baldessari and Barbara Kruger.
Portraiture emerges as another theme throughout the exhibition, with works rendered in dramatically different styles sparking unexpected dialogues. Andy Warhol's 1985 silk-screen "Self-Portrait" is displayed alongside Chuck Close's "Alex Reduction Black" (1993), a hyperrealistic screen print of fellow painter Alex Katz. Contemporary Chinese master Zeng Fanzhi contributes two "Portrait" pieces from 2007, featuring oil paintings of a hollow-eyed man and woman who appear as if they might dissolve into smoke at any moment.
Beyond the impressive roster of internationally recognized names, the exhibition reveals important insights about the museum's collection strategy and limitations. Nearly half of the 44 displayed pieces come from the late Samsung Chairman Lee Kun-hee's donated collection, which was given to the museum in 2021. Additional works were acquired through South Korea's new "art in lieu of tax" system, implemented last year, which allows culturally significant artworks to be offered as non-monetary payment for inheritance taxes.
This heavy reliance on donations and tax-payment artworks highlights the chronic budget constraints facing the MMCA. The museum's acquisition budget is capped at 4.7 billion won (approximately $3.35 million), an amount that proves insufficient for competing in the high-priced international art market while simultaneously building a robust domestic collection. Currently, foreign artists represent only 1,043 works out of the museum's nearly 12,000-piece collection, accounting for a mere 8.7 percent of total holdings.
The exhibition, which opened on Thursday, will run through January 3, 2027, providing visitors with an extended opportunity to explore these international masterworks. The show represents both the museum's achievements in acquiring significant international art and the ongoing challenges it faces in expanding its global collection within budgetary constraints.
