Korean Art Odyssey Evolving face of Korean exhibitions on global stage

Installation view of "The Genesis Facade Commission: Lee Bul, Long Tail Halo" at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York / Courtesy of The Metropolitan Museum of Art

DENVER, Colo./SALEM, Mass. — During the 1990s and 2000s, a new era for Korean art began to unfold. With the vigorous support of the government-affiliated Korea Foundation (KF), the first major wave of permanent Korean galleries opened across museums in the United States.

Among them was the Arts of Korea Gallery at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, inaugurated in 1998, where Soyoung Lee started her career as the museum’s first curator of Korean art.

“During that period, a lot of the focus and activities revolved around Korean collections that U.S. museums had already built, which were mostly pre-20th century,” recalled Lee, who now helms the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco. This meant the KF and the National Museum of Korea helped drive the emphasis on the country’s traditional art by supporting loans, exhibitions, research and curatorial residencies.

Yet this momentum soon met its natural limits, Lee noted. The available body of pre-20th century Korean works was finite, even within Korea itself, and there were growing ethical concerns over what should — or should not — leave the country.

“It became clear quite quickly for U.S. museums that to expand their collections and programming, they couldn’t keep acquiring traditional Korean art. There simply wasn’t enough.”

Many institutions gradually turned toward modern and contemporary artists whose work reflected a living Korea. It was a shift born of necessity, but soon coincided with a broader cultural tide: the global ascent of Korean popular culture, from K-pop to K-food, which drew new attention to the country’s creative landscape.

“International awareness of Korean contemporary art has been heightened by the explosion of pop culture over the last five to 10 years,” Lee observed. “And the launch of Frieze Seoul in 2022 has brought an influx of people from the U.S., Europe and across Asia who’ve taken notice of the range of activities taking place in Korea.”

Rising in tandem with this attention is the growing visibility of Koreans and members of the Korean diaspora across the global art world, from curators and collectors to board members shaping institutional decisions.

Installation view of "Only the Young: Experimental Art in Korea, 1960s-1970s" at New York's Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum / Courtesy of Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation

“Now, more than over, museums are very conscious of what’s happening in Korea,” she added. “It makes sense for them to broaden the direction of their Korean exhibitions to reflect and further build upon the public’s attraction to contemporary culture.”

This new current is evident in the recent string of Korean art exhibitions, not only in their sheer number but in their expanded curatorial focus.

These include the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s “The Shape of Time: Korean Art After 1989”; “Only the Young: Experimental Art in Korea, 1960s-1970s” at New York’s Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art’s “The Space Between: The Modern in Korean Art”; and “Korea in Color: A Legacy of Auspicious Images” at the San Diego Museum of Art.

What’s more, the Met’s 2024 Genesis Facade Commission went to Lee Bul — the first artist living and working in Asia to receive the honor. “The fact that the Met went in that direction, I think, is reflective of the current power of Korean contemporary art,” Lee said.

Installation view of "Lunar Phases: Korean Moon Jars" at the Denver Art Museum in Colorado / Courtesy of Denver Art Museum

Korean art on view in 2025

The new current of Korean art exhibitions has continued to flow this year in the U.S., buoyed by support from the Korean government, which “feels even more active than what the Japan Foundation did in the 1980s and ’90s for Japanese arts and cultural exchange,” noted Hyonjeong Kim Han, senior curator of Asian art at the Denver Art Museum (DAM) in Colorado.

“At a time when federal cultural funding is being cut, which leaves peripheral fields like Asian art increasingly vulnerable, this kind of sustained outside support allows curators to pursue projects that might not even have made it onto the museum’s calendar otherwise.”

At DAM, the focus has turned to placing Joseon-era ceramics in conversation not only with modern and contemporary art, but also with the Korean diasporic identity.

Installation view of "Perfectly Imperfect: Korean Buncheong Ceramics" at the Denver Art Museum / Courtesy of Denver Art Museum

“Perfectly Imperfect: Korean Buncheong Ceramics” centers on buncheong stoneware, a defining ceramic tradition of the late 14th to 16th centuries, distinguished by its milky white slip and freely expressive surface designs.

“As public awareness of Korean culture has grown, we wanted to introduce an art form that may be less familiar to many, yet continues to resonate with and inspire artists today,” said Kim Han.

“Unlike the perfectly polished crafts of its era, buncheong celebrates a beauty that breaks from convention — a sensibility that deeply connects with contemporary art,” added Park Ji-young, National Museum of Korea fellow of Korean art at the Denver Art Museum.

Placed in dialogue are more than 40 buncheong masterpieces and contemporary reinterpretations of their techniques and palettes, reflected in works by artists such as Kim Whanki, Yun Hyong-keun and Lee Kang-hyo.

From left, Lee Kang-hyo's "Buncheong Mountain-Water" (2020), "Buncheong Four-Story Pagoda" (2006) and "My House" (2006) reinterpret the expressive surface designs witnessed in traditional "buncheong" ceramics. Korea Times photo by Park Han-sol

The museum staged another ambitious Korean show this summer, this time turning its gaze to the luminous form of the moon jar.

“Lunar Phases: Korean Moon Jars” was, in fact, the first institutional exhibition in the world devoted exclusively to these vessels since the National Palace Museum of Korea’s 2005 showcase.

Assembled under one roof were six jars from the 18th century and six contemporary interpretations, presented alongside paintings, photographs and installations. Particularly striking was the prominent presence of Korean American ceramicists and artists — including Inchin Lee, Steven Young Lee and Minjae Kim — whose works explore the vessel as both a symbol of heritage and a meditation on identity.

“What does ‘Koreanness’ mean to artists of the Korean diaspora? Through the moon jar, we wanted to explore how their sense of homeland could find creative expression,” Park said. “What struck us was how deeply this diasporic sentiment resonated with the broader American public. After all, this is a nation of immigrants. A distinctly Korean motif, in the end, became a mirror for a shared American feeling.”

Installation view of "Lunar Phases: Korean Moon Jars" at the Denver Art Museum / Courtesy of Denver Art Museum

A portrait of Yu Kil-chun (1883-84) / Courtesy of Peabody Essex Museum

Meanwhile, in May, the Peabody Essex Museum (PEM) in Salem, Massachusetts, celebrated the reopening of its Korean gallery after a 13-year hiatus. Its new name, Yu Kil-Chun Gallery of Korean Art and Culture, reflects a unique history not found elsewhere in U.S. institutions.

Yu (1856-1914), a reformist scholar who traveled to the U.S. in 1883 as part of Korea’s first diplomatic mission, remained in Salem afterward as a student. He later donated his personal belongings to PEM with handwritten notes explaining their use, contributing to the museum’s founding Korean collection.

“The gallery’s reopening thus revives one of America’s earliest Korean collections,” said Kim Ji-yeon, the museum’s curator of Korean art.

Installation view of Yu Kil-Chun Gallery of Korean Art and Culture at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Mass., which reopened in May after a 13-year hiatus / Courtesy of Peabody Essex Museum

The exhibition fittingly begins with Yu’s “banggeon” (indoor scholar’s hat), “deunggeori” (rattan vest) and shoes that represent the everyday attire of late 19th-century Joseon elites.

A cotton armor from the late 1800s, once worn by a Joseon soldier named Kim Man-rok in the battlefield / Courtesy of Peabody Essex Museum

What stands out most is the breadth of media on display — a panorama of Korean material art and craft that captures the final phase of Joseon art, shaped by both native aesthetics and the first stirrings of Western influence.

More than 100 objects are on view: traditional instruments exhibited at the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago, where Korea made its first appearance on the global stage; a wooden “gama” palanquin unusually inscribed with the names of its makers; a “bandaji” chest once owned by the U.S. minister plenipotentiary to Korea prior to the 1905 Japan-Korea Treaty; a shamanic dagger reminiscent of the “shin-kal” featured in “KPop Demon Hunters”; and a cotton armor — “almost a prototype of the modern bulletproof vest” — worn by a Korean soldier during fights with Western forces in the late 19th century.

Coinciding with the reopening of PEM’s Yu Kil-Chun Gallery is “Jung Yeondoo: Building Dreams,” a contemporary photography exhibition presented in the very space where the old Korean gallery once stood.

In his multipart series, “Evergreen Tower,” Jung turns his lens on families living in identical apartment interiors, revealing not only how they live, but how they dream of being seen in their most ideal light.

Installation view of the "Jung Yeondoo: Building Dreams" exhibition at the Peabody Essex Museum / Courtesy of Peabody Essex Museum