The exhibition The Echoes of the Times illuminates the overall flow of Korean art over a century, from the 1900s to the early 2000s, in an art historical context. It presents some 110 works of Korea’s modern and contemporary art in the permanent care of public museums, including parts of the Lee Kun-hee Collection and the Gana Foundation for Arts & Culture Collection.

Ulsan Art Museum composed the exhibition around exemplary works through which one can examine modern Korean art’s development process, with the four themes of tradition/transformation, growth/exploration, experimentation/innovation, and communication/convergence. It will thus present Korean modern and contemporary art’s flow and tendencies, which have been progressing in Korea in the various aspects of the continuation and modification of tradition, individualities and unique expressions, an experimental spirit and defiance, and sympathy and communication for recovering the everyday and globalization.

Ulsan Art Museum seeks to examine how, in each era’s specific historical and social environments, artists tried to include the zeitgeist and life in art’s several styles at the times and, further, lend an ear to their inner spiritual responses and artistic sensibilities. We look forward to this serving as an important occasion for profoundly understanding Korean art’s true aspects from a closer distance and retracing the identity of Korean art, in meeting Korean art’s worldwide expansion.