The Seo-Seoul Museum of Art (Seo SeMA), South Korea’s first public establishment explicitly dedicated to new media, opened on March 12 in Geumnarae Central Park, in Doksan-dong, in the Geumcheon district. It constitutes the eighth branch of the Seoul Museum of Art (SeMA), covering the entire urban territory.
The SeMA network is led by Choi Eun-ju, who presented in January 2026 the medium-term strategy 2026-2030 as well as the programming of all sites. The new museum, however, has its own management: Park Na-woon is its inaugural director. For 2026, the eight sites plan 39 exhibitions and 634 educational programs.
The foundation stone of the building was laid in June 2015. The project, estimated at 50 billion won (30 million euros), was financed by the City of Seoul under its cultural investment budget, in accordance with the municipal statute of SeMA. The opening, initially planned for November 2024, was postponed due to construction defects. The architecture is by Kim Chan-joong, founder of THE_SYSTEM LAB agency, a recognized figure in contemporary Korean architecture and winner of the Seoul Architecture Award and the Korean Institute of Architects Award.
The building covers approximately 7,186 m², spread over two basement levels and one surface level. Its volume, deliberately horizontal, aims to dialogue with the park rather than dominating the urban landscape. The ground floor is largely glazed. The upper facade is clad in hammered stainless steel, whose undulated surface reflects light like a silver wave, transforming the skin of the building into a luminous device close to light art.
For Park Na-woon, the notion of “new media” covers a broad meaning. It includes not only cutting-edge digital technologies, but also any experimental practice mobilizing different media in order to explore the relationships between material or immaterial, human or non-human entities.
The collection includes 72 works of “new media art”, including around ten large installations. These acquisitions consist of videos, installations, sound art, performance captures, web art, game art, virtual, augmented and mixed realities, as well as various artistic practices based on networks.
Among the works are Namhan Trilogy (2001-2004) by Noh Jae-woon, pioneer of web art in Korea, as well as the works of Choi Chan-sook (Myitkyina2019), Song Sang-hee (Byeon Gang-soe Looking for a Person2016), Anicka Yi (Slippage Between Law and Art2022), and artists, such as Nam Hwa-yeon, Cha Jae-min, Cha Hye-rim and Park Hye-soo, who notably address colonial archives, technologies and the psyche, work and capitalism or working memory.
The opening comes in a symbolic year: 2026 marks the twentieth anniversary of the death of Nam June Paik, a global pioneer of video art, to whom the Korean new media scene is frequently linked.
