The National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art’s Yun Hyong-keun exhibition will travel to the Fortuny Museum in Venice to coincide with the 2019 Venice Biennale, the MMCA announced Friday. 

The MMCA added that the signing of the contract with the Fortuny Museum took place Tuesday. Yun’s retrospective is set to kick off May 11 next year at the gothic style building in central Venice, but the opening day of the exhibition could change according to the biennale’s schedule.

The Fortuny Museum is an art museum in San Marco, Venice. The space was once owned by the Pesaro family and later transformed into Mariano Fortuny’s atelier.

The atelier was donated to the city in 1956 by Fortuny’s widow, Henriette, and opened as a public museum in 1975.

The international tour of Yun’s exhibition was first discussed between then-MMCA Director Bartomeu Mari and the Fortuny Museum’s Director Daniela Ferretti, when the latter visited Seoul for the opening of the retrospective solo exhibition in August this year.

Yun’s exhibition was one of the exhibitions that the MMCA was endeavoring to bring overseas, along with another exhibition, “Civilization. The Way We Live Now,” at the museum’s Gwacheon branch.

Yun’s exhibition here -- comprising some 40 paintings, 40 drawings and about 100 archival materials -- has attracted a total of some 100,000 visitors since it began its run at the MMCA’s main branch in Seoul.

The exhibition was originally scheduled to end Dec. 16, but it has been extended to Feb. 6 due to the recent signing of the contract.

By Shim Woo-hyun (ws@heraldcorp)