"National Treasure Touring Exhibition: Treasures We Meet in Our Own Neighborhood," which the National Museum of Korea is holding together with regional public museums, opens on the 19th. Running through August 9, this year's first-half venues are three: the Jincheon Bell Museum in Chungbuk, the Yeongam Pottery Museum in Jeonnam, and the Righteous Army Museum in Uiryeong, Gyeongnam. The aim of the project is to ease the tilt of cultural infrastructure concentrated in the capital region.
The three exhibitions each put forward a different materiality. In Jincheon, "Dignity and Authority in Blue Light, Royal Blue-and-White Porcelain" presents five items in five pieces, including a white porcelain jar with openwork peony and scroll design in underglaze blue (Treasure). It is a vessel where cobalt-blue lines are laid over white flesh, and light passes through the peony vines cut open by the openwork.
The Yeongam Pottery Museum holds "Baekje Masterpieces, Baekje Patterned Bricks" from May 21 to August 2. Six items in eight pieces, including a brick with dragon design (Treasure). The surface of the gray-black brick, stamped from pressed clay, has a grain unlike the smoothness of porcelain, one that would likely leave a gritty feel on the fingertips.
"Flowers Blooming on Porcelain, Inlaid Celadon" at the Righteous Army Museum in Uiryeong opens on June 10 and closes on August 9. Six items in six pieces will be shown, including a celadon jar with inlaid peony design (National Treasure). Uiryeong is the hometown of Lee Byung-chull, founder of the Samsung Group, and the museum said three pieces of inlaid celadon donated by the late chairman Lee Kun-hee will also appear in this exhibition.
The project enters its third year in 2026. Over the past two years it has traveled to 20 regions nationwide, and some 460,000 people have visited the exhibition halls. It means that the route of boarding a train up to Seoul to see artifacts has moved into county and city museums one can reach on foot.
Moving national treasures and treasures always comes at a price. Artifacts are safest when left still inside a display case, and each time they undergo packing, transport and reinstallation, the risk accumulates a little. The reason the project has continued for three years even so is the premise that the end of preservation lies in letting someone see the artifact someday. The National Museum of Korea, led by director Yoo Hong-june, along with the Cheongju National Museum, the Naju National Museum and the Jinju National Museum, and Jincheon-gun, Yeongam-gun and Uiryeong-gun, each pair up to take on the first-half exhibitions together.
Programs are attached outside the exhibition halls as well. On May 30 at the Jincheon Bell Museum, a commemorative concert marking the opening, "Blue Melody, Meeting a Treasure," will be held with the participation of the Jincheon County Symphony Orchestra. During the exhibition period, a docent program in which teenagers explain to their peers, "Peer Commentary Leaders," and a creative convergence education program with a Chungbuk intangible heritage porcelain master, "Meeting Intangible Heritage," will be run.
In Yeongam, over two days on June 6 and 7, a weekend event made up of a string performance re-creating Baekje musicians, a magic show and a Baekje O/X quiz will be prepared outdoors at the museum. A digital short-form video that handles artifacts like miniatures using the museum's 3D scan data will also be released. The sourcebook "National Treasures That Came to Our Neighborhood," which compiles the aim of the project and the journey so far, can be downloaded from the National Museum of Korea website.
The tour does not end in the summer. In the second half it is planned to continue to three places, Cheongdo, Gochang and Seongju, and the detailed schedule and the artifacts to be shown have not been confirmed. That the question of which artifact goes to which neighborhood repeats every year would itself be evidence that the project has moved beyond a one-off event.
When the doors of the Jincheon exhibition hall open on the 19th, a jar once used by the royal court will be placed in the air of a town that made bells. In Uiryeong in June, peonies carved into Goryeo clay will greet visitors inside a building named after the righteous army. For one summer, the road to see a national treasure shrinks to a few kilometers of national highway.
