Georgia O'Keeffe at MMCA Gwacheon — 12 Nov 2026 to 21 Mar 2027

The American painter Georgia O'Keeffe, best known for her flowers and cattle skulls, is coming to Gwacheon. The National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea (MMCA) opens «Georgia O'Keeffe and American Modernism», organised with the Art Institute of Chicago, at its Gwacheon branch on 12 November 2026, and keeps it open until 21 March 2027. It is less a retrospective of one painter than the story of the painters and photographers gathered around the photographer Alfred Stieglitz, and how they worked out a modern art that was American rather than European. Admission is KRW 3,000.

The exhibition page gives the number of works as 107. The show has not opened yet and there is no press release devoted to it, so the final selection and count may change after the opening.

What is the exhibition about: the circle around Stieglitz

The starting point is New York in the early twentieth century. Stieglitz ran galleries that introduced young American artists, and the group that formed around him is usually called the Stieglitz Circle. MMCA frames the exhibition around that community rather than around a single genius: change, it says, needs not only one gifted artist but the people who share the aim and back it.

MMCA lists the participating artists by medium:

• Painting: Georgia O'Keeffe, Arthur Dove, Marsden Hartley, Charles Demuth, John Marin and others
• Photography: Alfred Stieglitz, Paul Strand, Edward Weston and others

Which works are the highlights

MMCA has put five works on the exhibition page so far. Three are O'Keeffe paintings, spread evenly across her career: abstraction from around 1920, a New Mexico skull from the 1930s, and a late work from 1960.

How Stieglitz photographed O'Keeffe

Stieglitz was O'Keeffe's husband and the first to champion her work. MMCA calls him her partner in life and art, and says the later part of the exhibition includes portrait photographs of her. The two pictures below are portraits of O'Keeffe that Stieglitz took in 1918–19; they belong to the Art Institute of Chicago, but it is not confirmed that they are in this exhibition.

How the photographers saw New York

Alongside the paintings, the exhibition covers modernist photographers such as Paul Strand and Edward Weston. Stieglitz himself photographed the fast-growing city in the early 1900s, from snowy streets to rail yards. Neither of the two pictures below is confirmed for the exhibition.

Who was Marsden Hartley

Hartley had one of his first solo shows at Stieglitz's gallery and painted The Last of New England—The Beginning of New Mexico, one of the exhibition's highlights. His style changed sharply, from the mountains of his native Maine through the abstraction he met in Europe in the 1910s to the red earth of New Mexico, and the three paintings below show that change side by side. All three belong to the Art Institute of Chicago; none is confirmed for this exhibition.

The last section: O'Keeffe and New Mexico

The final section turns to O'Keeffe's later career in New Mexico. According to MMCA, she first went there in 1929, spent close to twenty years travelling between New York and New Mexico every year, and settled there for good in 1949, staying until her death.

This part brings together her best-known pictures of desert bones and the surrounding landscape, her late work, and portrait photographs of the artist. Of the announced highlights, Cow's Skull with Calico Roses (1931) and It Was Yellow and Pink III (1960) belong here.

When is the documentary, and does it need booking

Alongside the exhibition, MMCA is screening «Georgia O'Keeffe: The Brightness of Light» (2024), a feature-length documentary on her life, free of charge. The museum's event page has a booking button, but the session times are still blank.

Can I see it in Busan instead

That is the plan. MMCA says that after Gwacheon the exhibition travels, as part of its regional touring programme, to the Museum of Contemporary Art Busan from April to July 2027; the Busan museum is also a co-organiser. Exact dates, prices and the number of works for Busan have not been announced.

What to check before you go

• The museum is closed on Mondays; it opens Tuesday to Sunday, 10:00–18:00.
• Ages 24 and under, 65 and over, undergraduate students and some other groups get in free on showing ID. Everyone gets in free on the last Wednesday of the month (Culture Day).
• MMCA Gwacheon is reached from Seoul Grand Park Station (Line 4) by shuttle bus or a walk of about 20 minutes through Seoul Grand Park. Public transport is recommended at weekends.
• When it was first announced early in 2026 the exhibition was called «Georgia O'Keeffe and American Modern Art»; searches under the old title lead to the same show.

Getting there, and how much is in English

From central Seoul, take subway Line 4 to Seoul Grand Park Station (대공원역). MMCA's Korean visitor page points to exit 4 for the museum shuttle bus and exit 2 for the walk: through the Seoul Grand Park main entrance and to the right, towards Seoul Zoo, about 20 minutes. The park's elephant train also stops near the museum, about five minutes' walk away. The museum warns the shuttle can be delayed or suspended at busy times. Tickets are sold at the museum desk, so there is nothing to book in advance and no Korean phone number is needed. What is less clear is language: so far the exhibition page and the documentary listing are only in Korean, and MMCA has not said whether the wall texts or an audio guide will be in English. The works themselves are American, most titles are English originals, and the documentary is an English-language film, so the exhibition is more accessible than most to a visitor who reads no Korean.