The Lascaux cave paintings to be exhibited in Korea next year

The famous Lascaux cave paintings will be exhibited in a cave in Gwangmyeong City in Korea for the first time in Asia.

Gwangmyeong City and Société Publique Locale (SPL) signed a letter of intent for the exhibition in the Gwangmyeong cave in the conference room in Gwangmyeong City Hall on Tuesday morning. The LOI was signed by Gwangmyeong Mayor Yang Gi-dae and Bernard Cazeau, French Senator and SPL President. Jerome Pasquier, French ambassador to South Korea, Daniel Olivier, director of French Institute of South Korea, and Olivier Retout, CEO of the SPL Lascaux International Exhibition also attended the event.

This exhibition is part of a commemorative project in culture and science for the “Year of Korea-France Exchanges in 2015-2016” to mark the 130th anniversary (in 2016) of the diplomatic relationship between Korea and France.

The international exhibition of the prehistoric cave drawings will be exhibited in the Gwangmyeong Cave for five months from April through September next year. An exhibition in Japan will be also held after the exhibition in Korea, the drawings will be The Lascaux International Exhibition started in 2012, and the drawings were exhibited in the U.S., Canada, and Belgium. The exhibition will be held in Switzerland in the second half of this year. The cave paintings to be exhibited in the international exhibition will be life-size mockups of those in Lascaux.

The cave drawings in Lascaux, which represent prehistoric times along with the cave painting in Altamira, Spain, were found in 1940 and added to UNESCO’s World Heritage Sites list. It is estimated to have been painted 15,000 to 13,000 B.C. The number of cave paintings is around 100 pieces, which depict a variety of animals such as horses, bulls, deer, rhinoceros, wolves and bears. The paintings in Lascaux are closed to the general public. Instead, life-size paintings are exhibited in another cave nearby the cave in Lascaux.

Gwangmyeong Mayor Yang said, “The Lascaux international exhibition will help our city to promote the Gwangmyeong Cave and the city to the world.” The Gwangmyeong cave is the only one in the Seoul metropolitan area as a tourist destination. It has an aquarium, a waterfall, a 200-meter long wine cave, an art hall, and an electric vehicle carrying maximum 23 people. Since the opening of the cave in 2011, 980,000 people have visited the cave as of the end of last year.