The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) has opened its first-ever dedicated bookstore in Seoul's bustling Gangnam District, marking a significant milestone in the New York institution's global expansion. The unique venue, which officially opened on Tuesday, features a distinctive split design with golden honeycomb shelves displaying design objects and curiosities on one side, and a sleek white gallery-like space showcasing over 200 MoMA-published titles on the other.

Unlike MoMA Design Stores that already operate in New York and Japan, this Seoul location represents the museum's first bookstore dedicated exclusively to publications, offering visitors everything from exhibition catalogs to graphic works alongside eye-catching design objects. The bookstore's arrival coincides with Seoul Art Week and the return of Frieze Seoul, positioning its opening during one of the Korean capital's most vibrant cultural periods.

According to Sarah Suzuki, MoMA's associate director, Seoul was chosen for its exceptionally fertile cultural landscape and enthusiastic art community. "When I come to Seoul, I always go around to a lot of museums, galleries and cultural spaces. To see those spaces so vibrant, so full of visitors of all different ages really engaging with what's on view, it's really special," Suzuki explained during an interview at the bookstore. She noted the tremendous enthusiasm for culture, experimentation, and intellectual curiosity that characterizes Seoul's museum scene.

MoMA CFO Daniel Perez emphasized that establishing a presence in Seoul felt natural, citing double-digit growth in Korean visitation to the museum over recent years, with the last fiscal year welcoming record numbers of Korean visitors. "It's a happy coincidence, but one that is not an accident," Suzuki added regarding the timing. "It just seemed like a really opportune moment, when Seoul is the focus of the global art world."

The bookstore's creation stems from MoMA's two-decade partnership with Hyundai Card, which celebrates its 20th anniversary next year. Hyundai Card CEO Ted Chung originally proposed placing the world's first MoMA Bookstore, rather than another Design Store, in Seoul's heart. This collaboration has evolved over the years from exhibition sponsorships to comprehensive curatorial exchanges that have significantly shaped MoMA's understanding of Korean art.

The partnership has resulted in solo exhibitions of major contemporary Korean artists, including Haegue Yang and Kim Sung-hwan, with the latter presented as part of The Hyundai Card Performance Series. This innovative programming strand integrates live art and performance directly into the main museum experience rather than relegating it to auditoriums or after-hours scheduling. "The idea with the series was really to make live art and performance inescapable in your visit because it's a critical part of the story of modern and contemporary art," Suzuki explained.

Looking ahead, genre-defying media artist Ayoung Kim will make her U.S. solo debut this November with her celebrated Delivery Dancer series at MoMA PS1, the museum's space for experimental practices. Suzuki praised Kim's compelling use of technology, noting her position at the forefront of utilizing game engines and AI while maintaining exceptional storytelling abilities. "She's using new tools to deepen her practice, rather than using them for the sake of novelty," the associate director observed.

Suzuki described Korea's contemporary art landscape as remarkably organic, populated by creatives who draw from premodern and artisanal traditions while reimagining them through 21st-century practices and modern tools. She noted that artists in places with strong artistic traditions typically both embrace and push against those traditions, seeking ways to respect and metabolize their illustrious history while creating something new and different.

MoMA's deeper engagement with Korean art has been facilitated through a curatorial exchange program launched last year, providing curators with immersive experiences in Korea's art scene. Over the past 18 months, seven curators have traveled to Korea, visiting institutions including the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Asia Culture Center, Nam June Paik Art Center, and Whanki Museum. They've engaged with diverse artists ranging from Ayoung Kim and experimental veteran Sung Neung-kyung to hanji artist Chun Kwang-young and collaborative duo Moon Kyung-won and Jeon Joon-ho.

These exchanges have yielded new acquisitions for MoMA's collection and informed the vision for upcoming exhibitions. The museum is also developing a Korean Art edition of its Primary Documents research publication series, scheduled for release in 2027. This series creates meticulously edited compendiums of key source texts on modern and contemporary art from regions outside the United States, providing English-language readers with critical texts that reveal how artistic moments, movements, and individual artists developed.

When asked to recommend a single book for Korean visitors to the new bookstore, Perez chose "MoMA Now," published in 2019, which features 375 works from the collection spanning approximately 200 years and artists from around the world. Suzuki recommended the "One on One" series, where each slim volume focuses on a single artist's work, designed to be read in one sitting. "It's like an invitation to spend 10 minutes looking at one piece of art," she explained. "There is so much to think about in just one work. These books are like a guide to that deeper looking."