Museum SAN

Character

Before reaching the main galleries, Museum SAN has already placed visitors between flower beds, open mountain views and a broad water garden around Tadao Ando’s stone-and-concrete building. The museum stretches across the ridge, with art spaces separated by gardens and long outdoor approaches

That distance is deliberate. The museum follows roughly 700 metres of mountain terrain through gardens, galleries and standalone spaces. Square, triangular and circular rooms connect the four wings of the main building; outside, the Water Garden and nine-mound Stone Garden keep the landscape inside the museum’s visual language

The collections add another layer. Museum SAN grew partly from the Hansol Paper Museum, founded in 1997, so Korean paper and the history of recording sit beside modern and contemporary art. Dedicated buildings for James Turrell, meditation and Antony Gormley extend the museum beyond conventional gallery rooms

The experience

Inside and outside keep alternating. A corridor can end in a framed view of trees; stone walls give way to water; the main building is followed by a garden inspired by Silla tomb forms. Even a long visit repeatedly returns to weather and daylight

The Paper Gallery is unusually specific to the institution. Its predecessor was Korea’s first museum devoted to paper, and the permanent displays follow paper from early materials and techniques through its cultural uses. That historical collection gives the museum an identity deeper than its famous architecture

Farther across the site, light and bodily perception become the subject. James Turrell’s permanent works use controlled light and spatial ambiguity, and the subterranean GROUND space created by Tadao Ando and Antony Gormley in 2025 places seven figures inside a circular chamber open toward the Wonju mountains

History

Hansol Cultural Foundation was established in 1995, and the Hansol Paper Museum opened in 1997. Plans for a combined museum developed later; Tadao Ando received the design commission in 2006, construction began in 2008, the building was completed in 2012 and Museum SAN opened in May 2013

The campus has continued to grow through additions. The Meditation Hall arrived in 2019. Ando added the Space of Light in 2023, and GROUND Antony Gormley Hall opened in 2025 as the architect’s first collaboration with Gormley

Each addition occupies its own position in the mountain sequence, extending the distance a visitor moves between enclosed art spaces and the surrounding landscape

Before you go

The Basic Pass covers the outdoor gardens, Paper Museum and Art Museum. James Turrell Hall, the Meditation Hall and GROUND Antony Gormley Hall use separate or combined passes, and several special-hall ticket types restrict child and infant entry

The campus is spread out, and the special spaces add substantial time beyond the main galleries. From Manjong or Wonju Station, the museum’s current guidance points visitors to a taxi or Wonju City Tour Bus; its former paid Seoul shuttle is not operating