Busan Museum of Art

Character

On 17 September 2026, visitors entered a rebuilt Busan Museum of Art and found, on the second floor, an exhibition about the museum that had just disappeared. *Dear All The Yesterdays* reconstructs the 1998 building through plans, photographs, administrative records and memories, tracing calls for a city art museum back to the 1960s

Another reopening exhibition, *Future Museology*, brings work from a consortium of nine museums into the third-floor Gallery 1 and asks how museums can function as public forums beyond collecting and display

The experience

The rebuilt main building has a new entrance direction, consolidated exhibition spaces, upgraded temperature and humidity control, expanded storage and a redesigned outdoor sculpture park. On the lower level, the Children’s Gallery, education rooms, BMA LAB and sunken garden form a separate family and learning zone

The second floor holds Galleries 2 and 3, the Project Gallery and BMA Space; Gallery 1 occupies the third floor beside the rooftop garden. *Still We Are Borne on These Waves: 1945–1953* combines artworks and documentary material around the years from liberation through the Korean War

Space Lee Ufan remains a separate building on the same campus. Opened in 2015, it gives the museum a permanent concentration on Lee’s work, including installations and paintings such as *Relatum* works and *From Point*, while the main building continues to carry the broader municipal exhibition program

History

Following years of advocacy by artists and civic groups, Busan Museum of Art opened in March 1998 as the city’s first public art institution, two years after the first Busan International Film Festival

Space Lee Ufan opened in 2015 and later became a base for the museum’s international “Lee Ufan and His Friends” exhibitions, bringing artists including Antony Gormley, Takashi Murakami, Christian Boltanski and Bill Viola to Busan

Leaks had recurred since 2016, and damage from Typhoon Hinnamnor worsened the building’s condition. A 43-billion-won overhaul addressed the galleries, storage, climate systems, visitor facilities and exterior grounds. The main museum closed for the work and reopened on 17 September 2026 after roughly two years of renovation

Before you go

The main building and Space Lee Ufan are separate exhibition experiences on the same museum campus. The main building handles changing municipal exhibitions, children’s spaces and the collection program; the Lee Ufan building is smaller and artist-specific, so the two can occupy very different amounts of time