American museums are facing a unique challenge as the Korean Wave brings new visitors through their doors: how to convert initial interest sparked by K-pop and Korean dramas into meaningful appreciation for Korea's rich artistic heritage. This cultural shift represents a dramatic change from just a decade ago, when Korean art struggled for recognition in Western institutions.
For decades, Americans who knew anything about Korea primarily associated the country with the Korean War from 1950-53 and ongoing tensions between North and South Korea. However, the explosive growth of Korean pop culture over the past ten years, amplified by social media, has completely transformed public perception and created unprecedented curiosity about Korean culture. This change is now rippling through museums across the United States, with more institutions reopening Korean galleries, expanding their collections, and staging new exhibitions.
Hyonjeong Kim Han, now senior curator of Asian art at the Denver Art Museum, recalls how different things were when she worked at the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco from 2010 to 2021. "Persuading a museum to take on Korean projects used to be an uphill effort," she explained. "Whenever I proposed a Korean exhibition or cultural program, they persistently asked what defined Koreanness and how we could show it differently from Japan or China." Today's landscape feels completely transformed. "It's nothing like when I started working in this field in 2006," Kim Han said. "It's so much easier to bring up Korean art."
However, this increased visibility brings its own set of challenges. One of the most significant issues occurs when people whose only exposure to Korea comes through pop culture enter museums or enroll in Korean studies programs. Park Ji-young, National Museum of Korea fellow of Korean art at the Denver Art Museum, explained the disconnect: "At universities, many students enter Korean studies drawn by the glitz of K-pop and K-dramas. 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 experience a similar disconnect. The modern, glamorous image of Korea that people know from pop culture often contrasts sharply with the ancient artifacts and traditional art they encounter in gallery spaces. Popular culture naturally emphasizes drama and spectacle, sometimes weaving unverified stories into narratives for entertainment value. When this becomes someone's primary understanding of Korea, they risk developing an oversimplified or even fundamentally incorrect impression of the country's complex cultural heritage.
Bridging this gap between pop culture interest and deeper understanding is essential, but experts say there simply aren't enough specialists to teach Korean history and culture with the necessary depth and accuracy. Academic programs haven't expanded fast enough to match public interest, and curatorial positions remain limited. In Korean art specifically, only a handful of universities including the University of Kansas, Dartmouth College, and UCLA offer dedicated courses or graduate programs. The overall pool of trained scholars remains small, with even fewer specialists in traditional Korean art.
As contemporary Korean culture gains global attention, universities increasingly hire faculty whose expertise matches current 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 emerged in museums. Over the past five years, major Korean exhibitions in the United States have focused largely on modern or contemporary art, including the Philadelphia Art Museum's "The Shape of Time: Korean Art After 1989" and the internationally touring "Hallyu! The Korean Wave." While Park noted that exploring these previously overlooked periods is necessary, she observed that "instead of presenting contemporary projects alongside traditional ones, it feels as though institutions are moving toward showing only what's current."
Another critical gap exists in the lack of publicly available English-language publications and primary research materials. This contrasts sharply with Korea's domestic situation, where scholarship in art history has expanded remarkably over the past decade, developing broader interpretive frameworks and refining theories about how artifacts should be understood. "Korean society, including its academic circles, is known for changing incredibly quickly. But the English-language resources have largely stagnated," Kim Han added.
This scarcity creates its own problems. With few English resources available, aspiring scholars might believe that mastering this limited pool of materials is sufficient to claim expertise in Korean cultural history. "Debates among many different specialists are what helps temper and challenge one another," Kim Han explained. "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 these issues requires long-term commitment. Tina Kim, founder of Tina Kim Gallery in New York, believes it's essential to think strategically and broaden support for the entire ecosystem surrounding Korean art. Chief among necessary 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," she said. Some efforts are already underway, including Joan Kee's leadership at the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University, where she is launching a Korean art studies program to train the next generation of specialists.
Within museums, expertise in Korean art must be combined with deep sensitivity to local cultural contexts and conversations. Many institutions are exploring ways to build cultural relevance and shape Korean exhibition narratives to resonate with their specific audiences. Kim Ji-yeon, curator of Korean art at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts, emphasized this ongoing effort: "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 noted that unexpected cultural phenomena, like the 2025 "K-Pop Demon Hunters" trend with its references to traditional Korean art and folklore, require museums to stay alert to changing public perceptions.
At the Smithsonian National Museum of Asian Art in Washington, D.C., this effort extends well beyond gallery walls. The institution designs programs to attract visitors who may not specifically seek Korean art but come for Korean culture experiences, naturally leading them to discover artworks. These initiatives include the long-standing Korean Film Festival DC and the annual Chuseok family festival, launched in 2023. "We have 6,000 to 8,000 visitors for that one-day festival alone," noted Nicole Dowd, the museum'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 through our exhibitions."
Soyoung Lee, director and CEO of the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, shares this philosophy of drawing people through music, dance, and food, then engaging them with art. She emphasized San Francisco's unique position as both America's West Coast and effectively Asia's East Coast. "Other than Hawaii, it's the closest point to Asia. That's really important to understand, both geographically and culturally," Lee said. The city has long functioned as a bridge to the American continent, shaped by immigration histories when the first Chinese, Japanese, and Korean communities arrived.
This reality informs the museum's mission of fostering dialogue with contemporary developments, particularly with living artists and curators who continue expanding their practice. Against the backdrop of aging museum audiences worldwide – a trend particularly acute in Asian art – the influx of younger visitors attracted by Korean pop culture represents what Kim Han calls "a tremendous boon." She concluded: "Precisely for that reason, we need to seize this cultural momentum with long-term commitments and investment, so that its energy can be sustained."
