If I had to take a guess, I’d assume this next museum is a personal favourite of the Chicken Lady. Once located in the centre of Seoul, the Museum of Chicken Art has now moved to northern Gyeonggi-do as the Maniker Museum of Chicken Art. If you’re wondering if it is possible to fill an entire museum with “chicken art”, well, one Korean, a retired public health professor named Kim Cho Gang, has proved everyone wrong, as she is utterly obsessed with the bird. She has a varied collection of 2,000 items from wood carvings, paintings, puppets, clocks and embroidery to pieces of furniture, tea cups, stamps, wine bottles and trash cans. Kim Cho Gang has said, “I do not buy luxuries. I don’t buy cosmetics. I am only indulged in chickens…Whenever I make money, I mostly spend it buying chicken art pieces.” And she certainly has. After a law was passed that empowered for-profit private museums (and that explains why South Korea has so many quirky collections like the Teddy Bear Museum and the Owl Art & Craft Museum) the Chicken Art Museum officially opened in 2006. Although the bird is associated with many important life events, Kim Cho Gang was afraid it wasn’t being fully appreciated. Ancient Koreans believed the chicken was a symbol of fertility, wealth, success, and even death. The museum displays wooden sculptures called kkok-du, which were traditionally used to decorate Korean coffins. But does the museum answer the age-old question “Which came first, the chicken or the egg?” I guess they’d say “the chicken”.
Museum of Chicken Art, Seoul, Korea
