MUSEUM OR TEA

SEOUL | DAY 06

Daelim Museum

[Paper Present]

One of my favorite museums that I go to every time I visit Seoul is D-museum. D-museum, however, has an older sibling named Daelim Museum located near Gyeong-bok palace.

Daelim museum is a little confusing in their layout becuase it consists of multiple buildings in the same area. You would have to go buy the ticket at a different building not too far away and then go to different building for the exhibition and gift shop.

Daelim is not a big museum but enough to have meaningful exhibition worth going to. Looking from the outside, the buildings were more like house/office kind of buildings, but the number of people walking in and out made me sure that I was at the right place.

If you are planning to visit both D-museum and Daelim museums, I recommend buying a package that saves you a little but and comes with discount coupons for coffee and gift shop. The tickets and coupons expired in March, so it was a pretty good deal.

I don’t remember how much it cost, but getting a D-membership would have been a better deal. Buying the tickets online will be cheaper, but that would require a Korean phone number. The D-membership costs ₩20,000.

D-membership comes with:

3x Admissions to Daelim and/or Daelim Museum
1x Cultural Program
1x Coffee at D Cafe
1x 10% discount coupon at the museum shop

If you’re planning to visit both museums, it will cost you ₩20,000 anyway, so this is a really good deal.

More information: here (In Korean only)

You would think that the museum shop wouldn’t have anything interesting, but it’s different here. They have a lot of good and cute things that are related to the exhibitions, so once they are gone, they are gone.

The exhibition held during this time was “Paper Present” which was held from 2017.12.7~2018.5.27. You can find more information here.

There are multiple floors, so I just started from the bottom to top. The exhibit was delicate and simple. A lot of people come here to take pictures.

The first that greeted me was this plain sheet of paper that allowed visitors to fill in the blank for the prompt: “Paper is _______________”

For me, paper is where feelings, expressions, and experiences are written down. What about you? What is paper to you?

When we think about paper, we automatically think about words, but I think they were trying to do something different here by transforming paper into means of art.

At this exhibition, paper was transformed into birds, bowls, and even flower garden.

The exhibit that was my favorite was the one with floating bird/flower like mobile origamis set up in a dark room casting shadows on the floor and the walls, . I liked how dynamic the pieces were. As people walk past, the pieces would waver slowly.

Another exhibit that captured my attention was the one where there was wisteria flower shaped paper hanging from the ceiling. It was like walking into a fairytale forest in the winter.

The last floor was also a good instagrammable picture spot with pink tall glass like installation coming from the ground. It was really pretty, but I also had a hard time finding a good picture spot to take.

Rather than enjoying the art, however, I feel like Korean youths are mostly concerning about taking pictures of themselves and with art works in the background.

There is nothing wrong with that, and I feel like the artists might have taken that into consideration when they designed the exhibition too.

Maybe it’s not just the Koreans, other people seem to be so obsessed with taking a picture of themselves. I mean I do too, but doesn’t that only point out our selfishness and self-centeredness?

Daelim Museum (대림미술관)

Official website: here

Address: 서울특별시 종로구 자하문로4길 21 (Naver Map)

Hours:

Sun - Wed: 10AM ~ 7PM
Thu - Sat: : 10AM ~ 8PM

The Neighborhood

I left the museum to stop by a coffee shop to get some coffee to fight this cold weather. The coffee shop was not too far away, and I really enjoyed the buildings in the neighborhood.

I really like Korean architecture, especially the Modernized ones. The wood and its texture make each building even more attractive.

Illsangdabansa

일상다반사

I finally came to this coffee shop less than 5 minute walk from Daelim Museum called “Illsangdabansa (일상다반사)”. I fell in love with the interiors which gave a very quiet and calm atmosphere. It did feel more formal than other coffee shops, and it made me feel a little uncomfortable, to be honest haha