Gallerygoers appreciate art at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea in Seoul. (MMCA)
Gallerygoers appreciate art at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea in Seoul. (MMCA)

The number of visitors from abroad to the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea marked a record-high last year, reaching 220,000, rising 36 percent from just before the pandemic in 2019.

The museum that runs four venues ― to main Seoul location, at the palace Deoksugung near Seoul City Hall, Gwacheon in Gyeonggi Province and Cheongju in North Chungcheong Province ― opened 20 exhibitions last year, attracting the highest number of foreign visitors since the main Seoul venue opened in 2013. The accumulated number of foreign visitors to the museum surpassed 1 million last year.

The most popular exhibition was “Back to the Future: An Exploration of Contemporaneity in Korean Art,” followed by “Jung Youngsun: For All That Breathes on Earth” and “What Things Dream About,” which were all held at the main Seoul venue, according to the museum.

Foreign visitors last year increased 5.6 percent from 2023, which stood at 208,938.

Visitors from the US and Europe accounted for 53.4 percent, while those from China and Japan marked 18.8 percent and 8.5 percent, respectively.

The museum attributed the increase in foreign visitors to the global popularity of Korean culture and the lifting of travel bans after the pandemic.

“We will put full efforts to present high-quality exhibitions in the time when Korean art is getting attention globally and come up with a variety of programs to attract more visitors from abroad,” said Kim Sung-hee, director of MMCA.

Meanwhile, the average age of museumgoers grew younger last year, with 41.3 percent in their 20s and 24.4 percent in their 30s, according to the museum's data.

For its first new exhibition of the year, the museum will present Australian sculptor Ron Mueck's hyper-realistic sculptures from April to July at its Seoul venue, in collaboration with the Cartier Foundation for Contemporary Art in Paris.