Part Two

On Saturday I went to Leesum Art Museum in Seoul. It a very posh art museum, the kind of place you would hold some fabulous soiree for a high finance company or a fundraiser to save dying sea anemones or something. The museum is actually divided into two separate museums designed by different architects. The first houses an excellent collection of traditional Korean art. Beautiful pottery, calligraphy, prints, and Buddhist sculptures. I found the blue-green celadon pottery with delicately sketched cranes, peonies, and plum trees particularly beautiful. In this part, the artifacts are illuminated but the rest of the exhibit is quite dark. There are no windows and you descend to each level by a white circular staircase. It has very solemn and splendid feel.

The second museum has modern art from Korea, America, and Europe. I saw Warhol and Kooming. This part had a kind of trendy, upscale warehouse feel. An exposed ceiling, rectangular windows, and steel walls. The design fit perfectly with the abstract and often minimalistic art. One work contained rows and rows of different colored pills, another had many tv screens piled high that showed various images. On a patio outside there was one huge metal spider which I was not so much a fan of.
After visiting the gift shop, I took the subway to Itaewon- an area full of international restaurants. My little town has mostly Korean food so it was a welcome relief. I spent a good 45 minutes trying to find a french restaurant that my guidebook recommended but it was well worth the search. The food was divine. I had a pastry filled with Camembert cheese for an appetizer, roasted scallops and risotto with lobster sauce as an entree, and an amazing white wine from France. There was even a French guy sitting at the table across from me. I felt very cool and sophisticated and forgot for one evening that I was a poor schoolteacher from the countryside of Korea :)