Whanki Museum

The 16,000 sf museum is dedicated to the memory and spirit of the contemporary
Korean painter, Kim Whanki. The program for painting and temporary exhibition
galleries, café, library, and multi-purpose hall, is distributed among four volumes that
merge with the topography to create a unique landscape of terraces and buildings. To
house the extensive program and maintain a balance between open space, building,
and the surrounding neighborhood, many spaces are located underground. The center
of the museum is a courtyard partially submerged in the earth. Light from a central
skylight fills the volumes below, while perimeter stairs connect adjacent gallery
spaces and exterior terraces.
“The formal and geometric echoes and c
ounterpoints are precise—vault and mountain, glass and stone, circleand square,
ground and sky. They lend an almost metaphysical quality to this empty, ordered
space, contrasting powerfully with the landscape and the lyrical play of light, form
and art that distinguishes the museum interiors.” —Museum Architecture

Architect

Kyu Sung Woo

Kyu Sung Woo was born in Seoul, Korea and received a Bachelor of Science and
Master of Science in Architectural Engineering at Seoul National University. He came
to the United States in 1967, where he studied architecture at Columbia University
receiving a Master of Architecture in 1968. Mr. Woo then received a Master of
Architecture in Urban Design at Harvard University in 1970.
After graduation he worked closely with Josep Lluis Sert at Sert, Jackson &
Associates (1970-1974). He was an Urban Design Consultant for Harbison New
Town, South Carolina (1973-1980), senior Urban Designer for the Mayor’s office of
Midtown Planning and Development, New York, NY (1975), founded Woo
Associates in 1978, Principal of Woo and Williams (1979-1990), and Principal of
Kyu Sung Woo Architects, Inc. in 1990, where he has continued his focus on creative
design solutions in the United States and abroad. During his architectural career Mr.
Woo has built extensively, with many major design works implemented, including the
1988 Olympic Village in Seoul, Korea.
The work of Kyu Sung Woo has been reviewed in numerous architectural
publications in Asia, Europe, and the United States including The Boston Globe, The
New York Times, Newsweek and The Wall Street Journal. In addition, three books
profiling his work, Casas and Whanki Museum, have been published. Mr. Woo has
taught at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and at Harvard University, and
won the Ho Am Prize in the Arts in 2008. Kyu Sung Woo is a Fellow of the American
Institute of Architects.
Architect's message
Early in 1988 the decision was made to build the Whanki Museum in Seoul , Korea .
As the museum primarily housed the work of the artist Kim Whanki, the design
attempts to correspond to aspects of nature, such as mountains, the moon, clouds,
rocks and trees that were important to his art. The building connects with these using
a modern sensibility. At the beginning of the design period, the site was limited to the
around the main building. During the following three years of design the adjacent
western property was acquired. this site was then used for the annex building.

Unlike fine arts such as painting and sculpture has its purpose of use. For building
design this purpose of use is an essential condition of a structure. In the case of a
museum this purpose is to provide an adequate environment for exhibition and
preservation of artwork and to provide a space for education and assembly, as well as
a place of rest for contemporary society. At the same time, the museum also presents
architectural experiences. Often the conflict between this purpose of use and the
character of the architectural experience becomes a matter of controversy.

In the exhibition spaces, the architectural experience should be subordinate to the

appreciation of the artwork. The design was based on the nature of Whanki's work
and followed a cautious approach to provide flexibility in determining the character of
the rooms, size of walls, lighting and materials, etc. The museum as collectively. This
intense activity requires fragmentation and rest. Occasional connections with nature
and the city enhance the experience of the artwork. This mutually escalating
appreciation makes the museum experience more profound. In this respect, it is
important to introduce natural light and to provide recognition of nature that is outside
the museum. The experience of architecture and the appreciation of artwork are both
necessary conditions of the museum which, rather than conflicting, complement each
other to make the entire experience of the museum more profound.
The small scale of the Buam-dong Valley can not accommodate a bulky building. For
the massing to accommodate many difficult conditions a significant portion of the
program is located underground and the remaining building is fragmented into several
pieces to form a small village. In this way each building has its own form, function
and meaning. The museum buildings, grouped around a central courtyard within the
walled compound, follow the axis of the valley. Within this general direction, higher
northern buildings coincide with the northern slopes of the mountain and mediate
between this direction and that of the southern buildings of the site. These small
changes within the general direction reflect the small and large order within the
valley.
Following the topography of the valley the buildings recreate the changing ground
plane on which they sit. The permanent collection pavilion presents significant
volume and meaning by being contained under the two barrel vaults and located at the
highest point of audience circulation. The stepping building rises floor by floor on the
edge to the east, corresponding to the scale of the surrounding small houses as well as
indicating the adjoining steep hillside. The building is organized from a series of
uniquely defined edges to a collective center marked by light. This produces an
inwardly focused composition that is adjusted to receive light and acknowledge the
external conditions of the site.
The building materials are used as in traditional Korean architecture; the building
meeting the ground is treated with stone which has the meaning of masonry. Above,
the stone expressed as a plane rises to the lead coated copper roof. the annex
building's exterior is cement brick, the same as the compound walls to contrast with
the special character of the main building and to express its ordinary nature.
The interior space of the museum is formed around an eight meter cubic underground
space, located below the courtyard. This space provides exhibition and assembly
function as wall as a general multipurpose area. Between the exhibition spaces and
central space are connecting zones which reinforce the meaning of the major spaces
and provides the necessary room in a museum for secondary movement, storage and
mechanical areas. The movement systems are organized in a series of intersecting
ribbons that give the visitor a choice of experience.
Most of the interior spaces are painted white. Walls and ceilings can be treated with
the same material and color thus limiting the plastic character to size and form only.
Artificial lighting is used in exhibition spaces for controlled illumination for the
artwork. All the exhibition spaces, except the space for drawing, have daylight
outside. As a museum located in a major city, the exterior space is designed to
provide maximum area for rest and enrich the experience of the museum. All of the
spaces within the compound walls, except the other areas for rest. Between the gate
and the main building is a major outdoor space with two distinguished pine trees.
The Kim Whanki Museum was finished after 5 years of planning. Though people
using museum spaces change through time, the artwork inside has to continue on and
the museum too must remain. People coming today, people who will come from far
away and people who will come in the distant future are all visitors of the museum. In
this respect I tried to base the building design on lasting issues such as the properties
of the land and the order of the buildings' spatial structure, feeling that it will
inevitably be of our own time. I would like to have the vanity to think this building
will become more familiar as time goes by and will become newer every time one
visits.
A visit to the Whanki Museum
The Korea Tourist Office website advises us that Kim Hwan-gi (1913-1974)
(known internationally as Kim Whanki — and he signs his paintings just
plain “Whanki”) “was Korea’s top artist of modernism”. It is therefore
frustrating that when you go into the Tourist Information Offices in
Insadong no-one has heard of him, still less of the museum that was built
specifically to house his work. On two occasions now (a year apart) I’ve
struggled to get the helpful staff to believe that there really is such a
place, and that I’d really like to know how to get there. I have to spell out
the website address, www.whankimuseum.org, and make sure they type it
into their browsers correctly, before they believe me. Once the website is
loaded on their machines, the sailing becomes plainer.

How to get there? Well you could take the 1020 bus from outside Jogye-sa,
tell the bus driver you want to go to Buam-dong and hope for the best. Or
you could get the Museum Shuttle Bus which sets off from immediately
behind the Tourist Information kiosk at the north end of Insadong (which
makes it doubly puzzling why none of the staff have heard of the
museum). The latter is the risk-free alternative, and Mr Kim Jeong-woong
the enthusiastic driver deserves your custom. He can get by in German
and English, and he will point you in the right direction when he drops you
off. He’s also a classical music enthusiast, so if you go prepared to discuss
Benjamin Britten’s Simple Symphony he will be doubly delighted.

The bus leaves at 11:30, 13:00 and 14:00, and takes 10 minutes to get to the museum.
So if you’re feeling energetic it’s really close enough to walk back. (You wouldn’t
want to walk there as you don’t know where it is, plus it’s uphill).
A lot of money has been spent on this museum. It’s an interesting building, designed
by architect Woo Kyu-sung. The first phase was completed in 1992, and the
remainder finished in 1997. There’s plenty of light and space inside, and on the day I
visited there were more staff than visitors. So no-one’s going to get in your way if you
want to contemplate your favourite painting for as long as you like.
When I visited, there was a maybe temporary display of two works by Felice Varini
from 2006 (presumably from that year’s group exhibition at the museum, the Poetics
of Space). At first, as you notice the strange yellow patches and dark blue curves
painted on the walls, you think it’s a groovy design feature dreamed up by the
architect. Then, as you climb the stairs, you see a notice on the wall staying “Yellow
oval pierced by 7 holes”, 2006. You turn, and you see that the yellow splodges are
designed to be viewed from one place, and one place only. If you close one eye, and
get your positioning precisely right, the yellow splodges painted on the various pillars
and walls coalesce perfectly, and you get an optical illusion of a yellow sheet of
cellophane (oval, with seven holes), floating in front of your eye between you and
your direction of sight. The other work, three large rectangles formed out of
concentric blue oval lines, is an even greater exercise in three-dimensional
perspectival trickery, with the patterns painted on pillars, walls both flat and curved,
and even inside the staff office. The two works make clever use of the museum space,
and complement the main show remarkably well.
The museum holds 1,000 pieces of Whanki’s work and personal relics. Many of the
works are rough pencil sketches, but many of them are of course major pieces. There
appears to be a sufficient quantity stored away to have an exhibition which changes
regularly (every, say, two to three months). I went expecting to see loads of blue dot-
paintings (example left), or less abstract works featuring Chosun dynasty moon jars
(example right).
Something very different was on display:

The blue dot paintings are from Whanki’s final years in New York (1970-74), while
the moon vases are from the mid to late 1950s. The works on display were from the
late 60s, just before the final phase of his creative career in New York, and featured
either a quadripartite design or other compositions featuring bold fields of colour.

Each painting was given due space to breathe, and given the crowd-free environment
there was plenty of opportunity to enjoy the works and the building itself.
You can get a coffee in the museum shop, on the upper floor of which is more
exhibition space. When I visited, they were showing some limited edition high quality
reproductions of some of Whanki’s major works. Some of them were for sale in the
shop — a bit steep at 2,000,000 Won each. There were more mass-produced posters
available at 30,000 Won each, but without the authenticating seal of the museum.
A leisurely browse round the shop (some good quality Whanki memorabilia apart
from the aforementioned posters, plus some books) plus a meditative perusal of the
main museum and grounds will just about take the two hours between the time when
the first bus drops you and the second bus comes by to take you back. If there was
some nice cake to go with the coffee, or if you can find any evidence of the “Walking
Trail”, the timing would be just about perfect.

Admission was 5,000 Won when I visited this week, with a 500 Won discount if you
used Mr Kim’s shuttle bus (which itself was 1,000 Won). Well worth a trip.
About
The Whanki Museum is a private art museum that was established in 1992
to exhibit and commemorate the art of Kim Whanki, who belongs to the
first generation of Korean modern abstract artists. He is regarded as the
father of Korean modern abstract art. He created his own art world full of
Korean lyricism by using a unique painting technique composed of
regularly repeated dots and colored semicircles crossing upside down on a
blue-grey background. He painted a series of beautiful landscape paintings
using creative abstract expressionism; the inspiration for these paintings
came from the beauty of Korea’s natural scenery. Over 990 square meters
of the huge exhibition area houses 8 themed exhibition galleries including
temporary and permanent exhibition halls that cover the artist’s life work.
The Whanki Museum created by an artistic mind

The museum building is a work of art by Woo Gyuseung, an architect, who

understands and admires the art of Kim Whanki. This museum is built in a
modern style and naturally blends with aspects of nature. It is naturally lit
with a unique hall design inspired by the shapes of the moon, rocks and
trees. These natural objects link to themes explored by the artist in his
work.

The museum art shop has a glass wall on one side, filling the café with
natural sunlight and allowing visitors to enjoy their surroundings.

A gallery

Bright sunlight floods into this spacious exhibition hall

 •

A view of the main exhibition hall

A view of the museum’s art shop

All 8 exhibition halls at the museum are specially designed to utilize
natural light. Artificial lighting is used in other exhibition areas, such as the
drawing galleries. There is a controlled illumination system to protect
paintings on display which gives a relaxed and natural atmosphere in
which visitors view the art works. The permanent exhibition hall on the
third floor is worth a visit; it is designed to be reminiscent of a traditional
Korean house, known as a hanok.

There is a beautiful garden on the rooftop of the museum which is

accessible through the exhibition hall on the third floor. It connects
directly to a path which leads to the mountain behind the museum;
visitors can take a peaceful stroll after their tour of the museum.