Seoul Museum of Craft Art Traditional Lantern Exhibition Guide: Dates, Venue, and What Was Shown

The Seoul Museum of Craft Art traditional lantern exhibition, officially titled Bearing Wishes: Floating Light, Brightening the Heart, was a 2025 craft cooperation exhibition focused on Yeondeunghoe, Korea’s lantern-lighting festival. For readers searching under Seoul Lantern Festival, this guide explains what the museum presented, when and where it took place, and what details were publicly confirmed.

The exhibition has already closed. It ran from April 25 to July 27, 2025, at the Seoul Museum of Craft Art, with the museum’s own notice placing it in Exhibition Building 1, first floor, and other public listings also identifying the first-floor area and outdoor courtyard as exhibition spaces.¹²

Seoul Museum of Craft Art Traditional Lantern Exhibition Overview

Bearing Wishes: Floating Light, Brightening the Heart was organized by the Seoul Museum of Craft Art together with the Yeondeunghoe Preservation Committee of the Jogye Order of Korean Buddhism. The museum framed the exhibition around the fifth anniversary of Yeondeunghoe’s inscription on UNESCO’s Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.¹

The exhibition’s core subject was the history and craft value of Yeondeung, or traditional lanterns. Public cultural listings described the content as covering the origin and history of lanterns, contemporary lantern works, and Yeondeunghoe’s development into a festival recognized beyond Korea.³

For visitors, the practical takeaway was simple: this was not a general city lantern event, but a museum exhibition interpreting lantern culture through craft. That distinction matters because the venue, scale, and viewing style were museum-based, even though the subject connected naturally with the broader public interest around Seoul Lantern Festival searches.

The Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism listed the exhibition as free. It also gave standard operating hours as Tuesday through Sunday, 10:00 to 18:00.³ Seoul Culture Portal added that Friday hours extended to 21:00, giving visitors an evening viewing option during the exhibition period.²

What Visitors Could See

The exhibition highlighted both traditional and contemporary approaches to lantern-making. The official museum notice named participating creators including Yang Mi-young, Lee Ki-beom, In Song-ja, Jeon Young-il, Ven. Jeongmyeong, Pung Mi-hwa, and Hyun Jae-yeol.¹

Buddhist Newspaper reported that the lantern-focused section introduced the history and modern development of Yeondeunghoe and included a total of 25 works. Those were described as eight contemporary creative lanterns, seven craft works, traditional restored lanterns, and dak paper works.⁴ This gives the clearest available sense of the exhibition’s scale and object mix.

The show also formed part of a wider program under the shared title Bearing Wishes. The Seoul Museum of Craft Art’s April 30, 2025 release stated that, for Buddha’s Birthday, it was holding Bearing Wishes: Embroidered with Thread, Reaching the Buddha, a special exhibition centered on Buddhist embroidered textiles. In the same period, the Yeondeunghoe exhibition Floating Light, Brightening the Heart was held in the lobby of Exhibition Building 1 and outdoors.⁵

That pairing helps explain why some public notices and media coverage referred to Bearing Wishes as an omnibus-style exhibition. News1/Financial News reported that Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon attended the opening ceremony on May 2, 2025, and described the exhibition as jointly planned by Seoul City and the Jogye Order to illuminate the value of Buddhist robes and Yeondeunghoe.⁶

The same report said connected programs during the exhibition period included wind chime and lantern-making experiences and a lecture by Ven. Myeongcheon.⁶ Because the available source material does not provide booking rules, participant limits, or a full program timetable, readers should treat those programs as confirmed associated activities rather than assume walk-in availability for every session.

Planning Notes for Future Visitors

Although the 2025 exhibition is over, the information remains useful for anyone tracking traditional lantern programming at the Seoul Museum of Craft Art. The confirmed venue was the Seoul Museum of Craft Art in Seoul, and the strongest official location detail is Exhibition Building 1, first floor; Seoul Culture Portal also noted the outdoor courtyard.¹²

If a similar exhibition returns, the most important details to check first would be the exact exhibition title, whether the museum keeps free admission, the current weekly closing day, and whether Friday evening hours are offered again. The 2025 listing showed Tuesday-to-Sunday daytime operation, while the Seoul Culture Portal listing specifically added extended Friday viewing until 21:00.³²

The exhibition was especially relevant for readers interested in three areas: traditional lantern craft, Yeondeunghoe’s UNESCO-recognized heritage value, and contemporary reinterpretations of Buddhist and festive visual culture. It also served visitors who wanted a museum-based alternative to an outdoor lantern festival, because it placed lanterns in the context of materials, making, preservation, and artistic transmission.

Seoul Mayor Oh Se-hoon was quoted at the May 2 opening as saying he would work “to make Seoul warmer and richer through the power of culture.”⁶ In the context of this exhibition, the statement aligned with the city-backed presentation of Buddhist craft heritage and Yeondeunghoe as cultural assets.

작성자 소개

Patrick Choi

Administrator

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