Museum Rietberg – The world’s art in Zurich

With its special exhibition “Hallyu! – The Korean Wave”, the Museum Rietberg will put the colorful and dynamic popular culture of South Korea on display in 2025, making it accessible to a wider audience. The Vontobel Foundation is providing support for this project.

The Museum Rietberg is one of the largest art museums in Switzerland. It is dedicated to the art of traditional as well as contemporary cultures of Asia, Africa, America, and Oceania. Its collections include 32,600 objects and 49,000 photographs.

A meeting place for all ages, the Rietberg offers a diverse program of concerts, lectures, guided tours, readings, workshops, and performances. These events combine knowledge transfer with impressive experiences, enabling participants to engage more fully with non-European art and diverse cultures.

The exhibition "Hallyu!" is taking place from April 4th to August 17th, 2025, putting the "Korean wave" into its broad contemporary and art-historical context for the first time. It describes the Hallyu phenomenon in all its diversity and impact and draws connections to classical and contemporary art.

The exhibition is an extended version of the one displayed in the Victoria & Albert Museum in London and includes around 300 objects, including paintings and arts and crafts dating from the 14th to the 19th century, modern and contemporary art, stage costumes from K-pop bands, props and posters for K-dramas, as well as photographs, fashion, videos, and pop culture ephemera.

The "Hallyu" exhibition has already toured with great success, showing in London, Boston and San Francisco. The Zurich edition is the only one in continental Europe; it is being complemented by a presentation of historical Korean art held in various Swiss collections.

The exhibition is curated by Rosalie Kim of the Victoria & Albert Museum in London and supervised in-house by curator Khanh Trinh  

 

Picture Credit overview page:
Saekdong by Darcygom. Photo Jihoon Jung. Courtesy of Darcygom