Chuncheon National Museum introduces new permanent exhibition

The Chuncheon National Museum announced that the special exhibition “Five Hundred Arhats of Changnyeongsa Temple Site” will be reopened as permanent exhibition on Friday. The subtitle of the exhibition is “Reflections of Myself.”

The five hundred Arhats were first found by a local resident flattening the farm land in Nam-myeon of Yeongwol County, Gangwon Province, in 2001. In an excavation work that continued into the following year, 64 fully intact statues and 317 statues of Arhats and Buddhist saints have been unearthed. The various faces of statues are not stern and have a down-to-earth likability about them, which touched the heart of many. First introduced as special exhibition in August last year in Chuncheon, the Arhats were chosen as the Exhibition of the Year in 2018 by the National Museum of Korea. Special exhibitions followed in Seoul and Busan.

The exhibition room is designed to allow visitors to experience the various expressions of Arhats as if strolling in the outdoor.

“The exhibition is neatly designed so that visitors can face meet their own selves in the Arhats in a quiet atmosphere,” explained an official of the museum. “We’ve prepared separate rooms for meditation and contemplation.”


Jong-Yeob JO jjj@donga.com