Last updated: September 2026
Quick answer: A major Koo Jeong-a retrospective — the Korean-French artist’s largest solo exhibition in Korea to date — opens at Leeum Museum of Art in Seoul’s Hannam-dong on September 5, 2026 and runs through December 27, 2026. The show’s installations are reported to spill beyond the gallery floors into the museum’s lobby, and the opening lands in the same week as Frieze Seoul’s public days — so anyone already in town for the art fair has an easy same-city add-on.
Table of Contents
- What Is the Koo Jeong-a Retrospective at Leeum, and When Does It Run?
- Why Does the Show Line Up With Frieze Seoul Week?
- How Do You Get to Leeum Museum of Art?
- Where Should You Stay Near Leeum?
What Is the Koo Jeong-a Retrospective at Leeum, and When Does It Run?
Koo Jeong-a is a Korean-French artist known for quiet, often small-scale sculptural and installation work that plays with materials, scent, and site — a body of work that has shown at the Venice Biennale and Palais de Tokyo but rarely at this scale on home ground. According to The Korea Herald, the Leeum survey is billed as her largest solo exhibition in Korea, with site-specific pieces that extend past the gallery walls into the museum’s lobby rather than staying contained to a single set of rooms. The show opens September 5, 2026 and stays up through December 27, 2026, giving visitors a roughly four-month window that stretches from early autumn into the winter holiday season.
Why Does the Show Line Up With Frieze Seoul Week?
The September 5 opening falls right at the tail end of Frieze Seoul 2026‘s public days (September 3–5) at COEX, and it’s not the only major show timed to that week — Jonas Wood’s first Asia museum survey opens at the Amorepacific Museum of Art on September 1, and Centre Pompidou Hanwha Seoul is already running in the same general stretch of the city. For visitors who build a trip around the fair, that means a cluster of museum-grade shows opening within days of each other, spread across Gangnam, Yongsan, and Hannam-dong rather than concentrated at COEX alone. Koo Jeong-a’s retrospective is the one closest to the Itaewon side of that cluster, since Leeum sits in Hannam-dong rather than near COEX itself.
How Do You Get to Leeum Museum of Art?
Leeum sits in Hannam-dong, on the northern edge of the wider Itaewon area, and the closest subway stop is Hangangjin Station on Seoul Metro Line 6 — from there it’s a short uphill walk into the museum’s hillside campus. Because Hannam-dong and Itaewon share the same stretch of Yongsan-gu, it’s realistic to combine a Leeum visit with an afternoon in Itaewon’s restaurants and boutiques rather than treating the museum as a stand-alone trip.
Where Should You Stay Near Leeum?
Since Leeum is a Hannam-dong/Itaewon-area museum rather than a downtown or Gangnam one, staying nearby cuts down on cross-city travel if you’re planning multiple visits during the four-month run — useful if your trip also overlaps with Frieze week, when hotel demand across central Seoul tends to tighten. Our where-to-stay-in-Itaewon guide breaks down hotel options in the neighborhood by budget, and the broader Itaewon guide covers what else is worth doing in the area between gallery visits.