Ho-Am Art Museum — Attraction in Yongin-si

Just returned from a miserable experience at the Hoam Art Museum. Leaving aside the collection itself, this museum was a crowded and unpleasant space with no possibility of even a moment’s contemplation of any artwork. The traffic jam on the road to the museum lasted half an hour. The Hoam offers free entrance to anyone visiting a nearby amusement park, which clearly adds to the problem of overcrowding and poor management of the volume of visitors. There are no facilities for even a cup of coffee anywhere. It’s a minor detail, but little thought has gone into the planning of this museum from the point of view of visitors who drive an hour or more from Seoul. Lastly, it was disappointing that a recently reopened museum did not provide English translation for the entirety of the exhibition. There were a few token English explanations as window dressing, but most of the information was only provided in Korean. All in all, a very disappointing experience on a variety of fronts. It’s a pity, as I was very much looking forward to my visit to the Hoam, but left after...

First - how to get to/from the museum via Seoul. If you aren't driving, you can reserve a shuttle bus seat on Ho-Am's website; the free shuttle leaves from Leeum Museum in Itaewon and returns to Leeum. Or, you can take bus 5002B which has a stop near Gangnam Station and stops at Everland Amusement Park. From Everland, you catch a free looping shuttle that leaves from Everland about once a day (picture attached) and drops you a 5min walk to the museum ticket booth.

The museum is on beautiful grounds with a lake hugged by snow covered mountains, the Stone Men path with seating along the way and Louise Bourgeois' Spider sculpture standing in the middle of the lake. The current exhibit with Nicolas Party is fun and a little mind-bending but not too abstract for contemporary art.

I took the shuttle from Leeum to get to Ho-Am and then I hopped on the Everland shuttle + bus 5002b to get back to Gangnam since I didn't want to wait til 5pm for the...

I visited the Ho-Am Museum last week and really enjoyed the well curated Kim Whanki exhibition. It was truly impressive to see such a big retrospective about his oeuvre and life. Afterwards, I took a relaxing walk through the beautiful and tranquil garden.

Ho-Am Museum is definitely worth a visit, even though it’s a bit far outside from Seoul.

Special thanks to the staff members who went out of their way to get me to the museum, as the shuttle bus wasn’t running yet and it was impossible to get a taxi: Thank you to the young lady and her two colleagues who took a detour to drop me off at the museum, and to Mr. Park Sehjoon from the Ho-Am Museum management team who drove me back to the Everline station. You really...