Exhibitions"Dutch Magic Realism: Past toward Contemporary": Museum of Art in Seoul National University presents 71 Dutch paintings and sculptures from ING Banks’s collections. The show will trace 80 years of figurative art, from Dutch realism to recent works, by displaying artworks by the European country’s representative artists including Carel Willink, Wim Schuhmacher and Philip Akkerman. The exhibition runs through April 12 at Seoul National University’s Museum of Art in Sillim-dong, souther

Corruption-stained Seoul Fashion Center closed and SFW searches for new organizerWith the Seoul Fashion Center shut down, Seoul Fashion Week, which has been hosted by the center for the past 12 years, will be run by a private company. Seoul Metropolitan City said it aims to “expand participation of private companies and enhance professionalism,” but everyone knows there is more to the story. Seoul Fashion Center, an affiliate of Seoul Metropolitan Government’s Seoul Business Agency, which has be

MADRID (AFP) ― Avant-garde Spanish painter and sculptor Antoni Tapies has died in Barcelona at age 88, local media reported Monday.Tapies was hailed as one of the biggest names in European contemporary art for his striking abstract canvases and compositions in which he sometimes used waste material.He won many awards and was associated early on in his career with other major names in 20th-century art, including fellow Catalan Joan Miro.He had a prominent art foundation named after him in the cit

HONG KONG (AFP) ― Nicolas Chow places a magnifying glass against a Ming Dynasty vase to inspect the potter’s 600-year old workmanship.Chow, the international head of Chinese ceramics and works of art at auction giant Sotheby’s, points out layers of uneven bubbles invisible to the naked eye along the early 15th century blue and white porcelain.The distinctive markings are just one tell-tale sign that experts rely on to determine if a piece is a multi-million dollar original or worthless fake.“Tha

TOKYO ― A woman in her 20s who is not afraid ― or dares ― to wear a monstrous costume to perform in the middle of a jam-packed crossroad is sure to become famous. Or, better yet, infamous.Lee Bul, one of Korea’s most internationally recognized artists, is back in Tokyo after two decades. But this time, not to shock the spectators on the streets with her performance but to share her agony and her secrets in a large-scale exhibition at Mori Art Museum.  As the title “Lee Bul: From Me, Belongs to Y

New director wants to see greater links between Korean, French cinemasThis is the first of the series introducing cultural centers of different countries in Seoul. ― Ed. Movie fans will be delighted to hear about the French Cultural Center’s latest ambitious project: to bring Cannes Film Festival to Seoul. “We are thinking about screening all of the award-winning films in Korea for a period of over a week. They have never done such a project outside of Cannes and there will be a lot of constrain

NEW YORK (AP) ― Andrew Lloyd Webber’s much-awaited sequel to “The Phantom of the Opera’’ is called “Love Never Dies,’’ but the musical defied its title: after a short life in London, it died. Now he hopes it can be resurrected.Lloyd Webber has quietly helped rework the musical for a current stage production in Australia, and Americans unable to go Down Under will have a chance to see it when a filmed version hits movie theaters this month.It’s a vastly improved work, coherent and visually beauti

Theater“Seoul Note”: In memory of late actor Park Gwang-jeong, who died of lung cancer in 2008, a group of actors and actresses are staging another run of “Seoul Note,” which was the last play Park performed in before his death. A local adaptation of Japanese playwright Orija Hirata’s “Tokyo Note,” the small-scale, slow-paced play takes place in gloomy present-day Seoul, while an imaginary World War III is happening in Europe. Popular actor Kwon Hae-hyo and recent box-office hit “Unbowed” star P

MADRID (AP) ― A “Mona Lisa’’ copy owned by Spain’s Prado Museum was almost certainly painted by one of Leonardo da Vinci’s apprentices alongside the master himself as he did the original, museum officials said Wednesday.The stunning find of what the Prado now says is probably the earliest known copy of La Gioconda will give art lovers and experts an idea of what the Mona Lisa looked like back in the 16th century, said Gabriele Finaldi, the museum’s deputy director collections.“It is as if we wer