Lee Kun-hee Collection Debuts Internationally at Smithsonian

The National Museum of Asian Art in Washington, D.C., part of the Smithsonian, is hosting "Korean Treasures: Collected, Cherished, Shared" until January 2026. This marks the first time the collection of Lee Kun-hee, the late Samsung chairman and South Korea's largest art collector, has been shown outside Korea. The exhibition features over 200 pieces spanning 1,500 years of Korean art, many never before seen in the U.S. The collection, donated to the nation in 2021 by Lee's family, includes over 23,000 works and artifacts. It was split between the National Museum of Korea and the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, which called it the "donation of the century." A new museum, the Lee Kun Hee Museum in Seoul, designed by German firm Sauerbruch Hutton, is under construction on a 25,000-square-meter site. The exhibition also includes around 100 Western works by Gauguin, Renoir, Miró, and Dalí, but focuses on Korean culture, including pieces by painter Lee Jungseop and artisan Yoo Kangyul. The collection originated with Samsung founder Lee Byung-chul, who aimed to repatriate Korean art lost abroad. Lee Kun-hee faced controversy in 2007 over alleged art purchases with laundered funds, but was only convicted of tax evasion. After Washington, the show will travel to Chicago and London before returning to Seoul.