Korean Art Odyssey Beyond K-wave: Can museums turn pop culture-driven curiosity into lasting understanding?

Installation view of "Korean Treasures: Collected, Cherished, Shared" at the Smithsonian National Museum of Asian Art in Washington, D.C. Courtesy of National Museum of Asian Art, Smithsonian Institution

DENVER, Colo./WASHINGTON — For decades, the American public’s image of Korea, if it existed at all, was largely confined to the 1950-53 war and the ever-shifting tensions between the two Koreas.

In less than 10 years, however, the country’s pop culture exports, buoyed by the global reach of social media, have blown open that narrow frame and sparked an entirely new curiosity. Such a shift has begun to echo across museums as well, as more institutions reopen dedicated Korean galleries, expand their collections and stage new exhibitions.

Persuading a museum to take on Korean projects used to be an uphill effort, Hyonjeong Kim Han recalled. In the early years of her tenure at the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, which spanned from 2010 to 2021, whenever she proposed a Korean exhibition or cultural program, “they persistently asked what defined ‘Koreanness’ and how we could show it differently from Japan or China,” she told The Korea Times.

Today, the landscape feels transformed. “It’s nothing like when I started working in this field in 2006,” said Kim Han, now senior curator of Asian art at the Denver Art Museum (DAM). “It’s so much easier to bring up Korean art.”

But greater visibility brings its own set of challenges. One of the most pressing issues emerges when people who have encountered Korea solely through its pop culture begin stepping into museums or enrolling in Korean studies programs.

At universities, many students enter Korean studies drawn by the glitz of K-pop and K-dramas, explained Park Ji-young, National Museum of Korea fellow of Korean art at DAM. Then, almost immediately, they collide with unfamiliar history, classical texts written in Chinese characters and an entirely new vocabulary. For many, it feels like hitting an unexpected wall.

Museums witness a similar dissonance. “The glittering, hypermodern image of Korea they know from pop culture is often oceans apart from the antiquities and deep art-historical traditions they come to face in the galleries.”

By nature, popular culture exalts and embellishes; it weaves unverified stories into its narratives for dramatic effect. When that becomes the primary lens through which people understand Korea, they risk oversimplifying a multilayered culture — or, at times, walking away with an impression that is fundamentally mistaken.

Denver Art Museum (DAM) in Colorado is one U.S. art institution that has a strong Korean art curatorial presence. Courtesy of DAM

Bridging this gap is essential if newcomers are to move beyond surface-level fascination and toward a more grounded understanding of the country. However, experts say, there simply aren’t enough specialists to teach Korea’s history and culture with depth and accuracy. Academia has not expanded at a pace that matches public interest, and curatorial positions are still limited.

In the field of Korean art, a handful of universities — including the University of Kansas, Dartmouth College and UCLA — do offer dedicated courses or graduate programs. But the overall pool of trained scholars remains small, and those specializing in premodern art are fewer still. As contemporary Korean culture commands more global attention, universities have increasingly hired faculty whose expertise aligns with that demand.

“We need to teach the roots that nourished today’s pop culture — the Korean art that predates the 20th century — but the opportunities to do so are diminishing,” Kim Han said. “Many universities are focused on hiring in popular media or contemporary art, and frankly, they have to, because that’s where student demand is.”

A similar pattern has taken hold in museums. Over the last five years, a string of headline Korean exhibitions mounted in the U.S. have centered largely on modern or contemporary art, from the Philadelphia Art Museum’s “The Shape of Time: Korean Art After 1989” to the internationally touring “Hallyu! The Korean Wave.”

“Of course, it’s necessary to explore such periods that earlier exhibitions overlooked,” Park noted. “But instead of presenting contemporary projects alongside traditional ones, it feels as though institutions are moving toward showing only what’s current.”

Installation view of the Philadelphia Art Museum's "The Shape of Time: Korean Art After 1989" exhibition from October 2023 to February 2024 / Courtesy of Philadelphia Art Museum

In addition to the shortage of trained specialists, another urgent gap lies in the critical lack of publicly available English-language publications and primary research materials. This stands in stark contrast with Korea’s domestic situation, where scholarship in the country’s art history has expanded at a remarkable speed over the past decade, widening its interpretive frameworks and refining its theories on how artifacts are read and understood.

“Korean society, including its academic circles, is known for changing incredibly quickly. But the English-language resources have largely stagnated,” she added.

That scarcity, according to Kim Han, creates its own pitfalls. With few English resources available, aspiring scholars may be led to believe that mastering this limited pool of materials is enough to claim expertise in Korean cultural history.

“Debates among many different specialists are what helps temper and challenge one another. But because only a small number of universities and museums have Korean art experts, their voices can easily become overrepresented. The opinions of one or two individuals can start to look like authoritative knowledge about Korea as a whole.”

Addressing this issue requires long-term commitments.

“I believe it’s essential to think in terms of long-term strategy and to broaden support for the entire ecosystem surrounding Korean art,” said Tina Kim, founder of Tina Kim Gallery in New York.

Chief among those strategies is cultivating the next generation of scholars with both global fluency and forward-looking perspectives. Strengthening the academic pathways and institutional infrastructure that allow such training to take root is crucial.

Some efforts are already underway.

“I’m excited about Joan Kee’s leadership at the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University, where she is launching a Korean art studies program that will help train the next generation of specialists,” Tina Kim added.

A visitor browses traditional Korean accessories at the National Museum of Asian Art store during its 2024 Chuseok celebration. Courtesy of National Museum of Asian Art, Smithsonian Institution

Cultural relevance

Within museums, DAM’s two curators stressed, expertise in Korean art must be paired with a deep sensitivity to the local cultural rhythms and conversations of the places they serve.

Many institutions are exploring avenues to build that cultural relevance and shape Korean exhibition narratives and programs so they resonate with the sensibilities and needs of local audiences.

Kim Ji-yeon, curator of Korean art at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts, echoed this sentiment.

“Sometimes you think that once every object is installed, the work is done. But in reality, it’s a constant effort of reinterpreting and making it newly relevant,” she said. “No one, for instance, anticipated the ‘KPop Demon Hunters’ boom in 2025 (with its playful nods to traditional Korean art and folklore). It’s very important to stay alert to what’s happening outside the museum and how people’s perceptions keep changing. The objects themselves remain the same, but we can make them continually evolve.”

At the Smithsonian National Museum of Asian Art (NMAA) in Washington, D.C., that effort extends well beyond the gallery walls. The institution designs programs that attract visitors who may not be seeking Korean art specifically, but come for a taste of Korean culture — and in doing so, naturally find themselves drifting into the galleries and discovering the artworks firsthand.

Korean artist Do Ho Suh's "Public Figures" (1998-2023) is installed on Freer Plaza of the Smithsonian National Museum of Asian Art in Washington, D.C. / Korea Times photo by Park Han-sol

These initiatives include the long-standing Korean Film Festival DC as well as the annual Chuseok family festival, launched in 2023 as part of the museum’s centennial.

“We have 6,000 to 8,000 visitors for that one-day festival alone,” noted Nicole Dowd, NMAA’s head of public programs. “Someone might come with an appreciation for Korean culture through K-dramas, movies and food, but they end up learning about some of the origins of that imagery, of those scenes through our exhibitions. I think that’s a large part of our philosophy: building a connection between the objects on view, the public programs and educational experiences.”

A similar goal guides Soyoung Lee, director and CEO of the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, who aims to draw people into the museum through music, dance and food, and once they are inside, gently “winning them over with the art.”

Lee underscored the importance of forging a living connection with San Francisco itself — a city whose geography and history uniquely situate it within the cultural currents of Asia.

“San Francisco is the West Coast of the U.S., but it’s also [effectively] the East Coast of Asia. Other than Hawaii, it’s the closest point to Asia. That’s really important to understand, both geographically and culturally,” she said. Artistically, the city has long functioned as a bridge to the American continent, shaped in part by the histories of immigration, when the first Chinese, Japanese and Korean communities arrived on these shores.

That reality is what should — and does — inform the museum’s mission of “bridging a vigorous dialogue with what’s happening here, particularly with the living artists and curators who continue to expand their practice,” she noted.

Across the world, museum audiences are aging — a trend felt even more acutely in Asian art. Against that backdrop, the growing influx of younger visitors captivated by Korean pop culture is, as DAM’s Kim Han puts it, “a tremendous boon.”

“Precisely for that reason, we need to seize this cultural momentum with long-term commitments and investment, so that its energy can be sustained.”