The Seoul Museum of Art: quite well done!

On Wednesday of this glorious week of vacation, I set out early to get my alien resident card (ARC).  This involved an hour-plus subway trip, plus all the number-taking and waiting-room-waiting and paperwork-filling-outing and passport-surrendering that my little heart could handle.  But I was done with that little chore early (woohoo!), so I hopped back on the subway--I am SO cosmopolitan--and rode over to the Seoul Museum of Art.

SeMA, as it likes to be known, was small but pretty cool.  And it cost just W700; in case you haven't learned the conversion yet, that's 70 cents.  Hot dang!  All the art on display was modern, which suits me well.  And the special exhibit going on right now has the theme of optical illusions, which was really cool.  (They didn't call it that, but that's essentially what it was: art that your brain interprets differently than what your eyes literally see.)

Some of my favorites include a room filled with mesh orbs and mirrors:

...a wall full of carefully-arranged Post-It notes (click on the pictures to enlarge them):

...and a huge, wall-sized piece with tons of little shelves which were piled with tea leaves.  The first picture is the whole wall; the second picture is a close-up.  The dark parts of the artwork are just clusters of tea leaves on the shelves; I hope that makes sense!

I also really enjoyed this piece, which was made of thousands of little white pegs facing different directions.  There were also lights placed all around the piece, which faded on and off in succession, highlighting different pegs--and thus, different shapes.  Quite a clever concept.

I wasn't such a fan of the permanent collection, unfortunately.  And for some reason I don't understand (maybe it's a Korean thing?), most of the paintings came in sets of two.  There'd be a reddish one and a similar bluish one, or whatever.  Hmm.

Another excellent part of the museum--though it probably sounds ridiculous to say this--was its umbrella stand outside.  Seoul is in the middle of its monsoon season, so every time you leave the house you need to carry an umbrella.  (Unless you're Roommate Jake, of course, in which case you are a total idiot and NEVER bring an umbrella.  Despite the advice of your sweet, kindhearted roommate.)

As you can see, the umbrellas are locked up in their own little compartments.  There was even a little attendant man to help you out!  And when you lock up your umbrella, you take a little key-tab thing with you (you can see it in slot number 366) and use it as your claim ticket to get your umbrella back.  Brilliant!  Korea's been full of clever little innovations like that, and they fill my little heart with glee.   :c)