Korea runs at the British Museum from 1 October 2026 to 31 January 2027.
Korea has been making art continuously for two thousand years and Britain has almost never seen it. The British Museum’s exhibition gathers objects from the whole span: royal tombs and palaces, Buddhist temples, the studios of scholar-painters, private houses, and the modern galleries of Seoul — and most of them have never been shown in this country before. A gilt-bronze Avalokiteshvara holding a water vessel; a gourd-shaped celadon ewer with chrysanthemums cut into it; the six-panel folding screen of the sun, moon and five peaks that stood behind the throne; Jeong Seon’s Clearing After Rain on Mount Inwang.
The argument is that the run of Korean cultural export over the last twenty years has a very long history behind it, and that the ceramics alone would justify the room. Korean celadon of the Goryeo period was rated by Chinese connoisseurs as the finest in the world, which from that quarter was an extraordinary admission and is the single fact most likely to change how a visitor looks at the cases.
It runs from Thursday 1 October 2026 to Sunday 31 January 2027, ticketed, and it is the museum’s special exhibition for the autumn. It shares the building with the Bayeux Tapestry, which is the more famous loan and the more crowded room — this is the one where you will be able to stand in front of things. It closes at the end of January.