Smithsonian Friends' Korea Tour to Explore Ancient Art, Modern Culture

The Smithsonian Institution's Freer and Sackler galleries, the premier venues for Asian art in the United States, will conduct a 10-day tour of South Korea's greatest traditional art and cultural heritage sites this September, open the museums' supporters and members of the public who wish to join.

With the historic stops throughout the capital Seoul and the southern city of Gyeongju, home to some of the world's most stunning Buddhist temples, the tour will be led by Julian Raby, director of the Freer Gallery of Art and Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Associate Director Keith Wilson, and Seungeun Euna Yoo, founder of founded SEY ARTNET.

"[We] have designed an itinerary that highlights the beauty and meaning of Korean art and culture, from antiquity to today", says tour leader Wilson. "I look forward to introducing our group to places of transcendent splendor and to people of extraordinary dedication and invention. By comparing and contrasting what we see in Korea with perhaps familiar sites and works of art in China and Japan, we will come to define what might be called the Korean style".

The purpose of the tour is to highlight the uniqueness of Korean art and culture, and represents a new direction for the Freer and Sackler galleries, which continue to expand their Korean art collections.

For more information about the tour, including costs, a detailed itinerary, and how to take part, visit the Friends of the Freer and Sackler Galleries website, or download the tour brochure and application directly at this link(PDF).

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