“Korea” exhibition opens today at the British Museum: 100 masterpieces from Lee Kun-Hee’s legendary collection

Opens today — The “Korea” exhibition opens today, October 1, 2026, in the Joseph Hotung Great Court Gallery of the British Museum in London, and will remain open to the public until January 31, 2027. Organised by the British Museum in cooperation with the National Museum of Korea and the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art of Korea, the exhibition brings 100 masterpieces from the collection of the late Lee Kun-Hee (1942–2020), the former Samsung chairman, as Samsung Global Newsroom reports.

The exhibition covers over 2,000 years of Korean art and includes 10 National Treasures and 13 Treasures of Korea; over 20 works are being presented internationally for the first time. Among the highlighted works are “Bronze Artifacts from Bisan-dong, Daegu”, “Bronze Rattles” and the “Celadon Incense Burner with Girin-shaped Lid”, a masterpiece of Goryeo dynasty celadon from the 12th century. Modern and contemporary art is represented by Nam June Paik with “Brahms”, Lee Jungseop with “Bound People” and Park Rehyun with “Woman”, according to Asian Art Newspaper.

This is the first major presentation of Korean art at the British Museum in over 40 years. A gala evening was held on the evening of September 30 in cooperation with Samsung Electronics, attended by Samsung Electronics Executive Chairman Jay Y. Lee, the Princess Royal, Leeum Museum of Art honorary director Hong Ra-Hee, as well as Lee Boo-jin and Lee Seo-hyun. “I hope this exhibition will be a gateway to Korean culture… for everyone to see Korea a little differently — for its beauty, depth and resilience,” Jay Y. Lee said, as The Luxe Review reports.

London is the European stop of an international tour that began in November 2025 at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art in Washington D.C., where it drew around 80,000 visitors and was described as the largest special exhibition in 10 years, and then continued at the Art Institute of Chicago, with around 115,000 visitors.

Over 23,000 works from the Lee Kun-Hee collection were donated in 2021 as a national legacy, while the Lee family’s commitment to culture spans three generations — from founder Lee Byung-Chull, to Lee Kun-Hee and Hong Ra-Hee.