National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, South Korea

Few museums spread their collection across four sites, but MMCA (국립현대미술관) does. Its branches range from a stone palace hall to a converted tobacco factory, and together they form South Korea's national museum for modern and contemporary art. They draw more than three and a half million visits a year.

The original Gwacheon branch, opened in 1986 beside Seoul Grand Park, has an outdoor sculpture garden. At the centre of its spiral atrium stands Nam June Paik's The More, the Better, a tower of more than a thousand television monitors. MMCA Deoksugung occupies a neoclassical building inside the Deoksugung palace grounds and concentrates on Korean modern art of the early twentieth century. MMCA Seoul, opened in 2013 next to Gyeongbokgung Palace, presents contemporary work across galleries built around older structures on the site. MMCA Cheongju, in a former tobacco plant, puts much of the collection on view in open storage.

Founded in 1969, the museum gives the broadest single picture of how Korean art developed alongside international movements. Each branch makes a self-contained visit.