LG’s Gallery TV Turns Your Living Room Into a Louvre—Without the Crowds

When the Screen Goes Dark, the Art Comes to Life

At 8:07 p.m. last Thursday, the lights dimmed inside LG’s Seoul design studio. A velvet hush fell as a 65-inch television flicked off, then bloomed into a 4K reproduction of Van Gogh’s Almond Blossoms. The frame looked like canvas; the brushstrokes caught the overhead spots. Reporters leaned forward, half expecting a security guard to shoo them away from the “painting.”

The Gallery TV Arrives—Quietly, Then Loudly

LG has spent years flirting with lifestyle screens—rolling OLEDs, transparent concepts—but the Gallery TV is its first mass-market swing at Samsung’s Frame-dominated art-TV niche. Slated for global release next month, the unit hugs the wall at 12 mm, ships with 1,500 pre-loaded works, and swaps the typical black bezel for a magnetic wood-look frame that snaps off like a refrigerator door.

Specs That Don’t Scream ‘Specs’

• 4K OLED evo panel with LG’s α9 Gen 6 processor
• Matte, anti-reflection coating rated at <1% glare
• Motion sensor that dims the screen when nobody’s watching
• Calorie-thin 300 × 300 VESA mount; no gap, no tilt

The Price of Hanging Monet Above the Sofa

Pre-orders open at $2,499 for the 55-inch and $3,299 for the 65-inch. That undercuts Samsung’s 65-inch Frame by roughly $200 while bundling a year of premium museum partnerships—MoMA, Tate, Uffizi—normally a $5-a-month upsell on rival sets.

“We’re not selling a television. We’re selling the illusion that you own the Rothko,” said Han Myung-woo, LG’s senior vice-president of home entertainment, moments after the reveal.

Inside the Algorithmic Curator

Each midnight, the Gallery TV pings LG’s cloud for new acquisitions. A local neural network studies your color palette history—earthy browns last month?—and queues works that harmonize with your living-room tones. Users can veto suggestions with a remote click; over time, the feed grows eerily personal. One beta tester in Stockholm reported the TV served up a chilly Munch lithograph the same week she repainted her walls oxford gray.

Art TVs Are No Longer a Niche—They’re a Growth Engine

According to Omdia, shipments of “lifestyle” TVs—sets marketed for their aesthetics when off—jumped 42% last year even as overall TV sales shrank 6%. Samsung commands 68% of the sub-segment, but LG’s entry could redraw the canvas. Retailers from Best Buy to John Lewis have already carved out dedicated wall space for art TVs, a merchandising shift that once felt as unlikely as selling refrigerators in the living room.

What Critics Are Saying

• Wired: “The first art TV that doesn’t look like a TV pretending to be art.”
• The Verge: “LG’s matte finish finally kills the mirror-effect that haunts every other Frame competitor.”
• Wallpaper*: “A genuine design object—provided you hide the One Connect box.”

The Hidden Cost of a Masterpiece

Unlike Samsung, LG locks its art subscription behind a webOS login; if you cancel, the screen reverts to a rotating set of 100 Creative Commons landscapes. Still, the TV’s internal storage caches your last 50 favorites, so the Louvre doesn’t vanish overnight.

Bottom Line

LG’s Gallery TV isn’t just another pretty panel—it’s a calculated bet that consumers want their Netflix machine to moonlight as a museum piece. If early buzz translates into sales, expect every major manufacturer to rush out copycat canvases. Until then, the only thing left to decide is: Do you want your wall in Renaissance or Rococo?