As Korean culture gains unprecedented popularity worldwide, museums around the globe are reaching out to Korean institutions more than ever before, seeking joint exhibitions, research partnerships, and even permanent Korean art galleries. This surge in international interest has revealed both opportunities and challenges in Korea's cultural exchange system, leading to significant reforms in how the country supports Korean art collections abroad.
The growing demand has exposed structural limitations in the existing system for cultural exchanges and support programs. Overseas institutions continue to face staffing shortages, conservation gaps, and short-term project cycles that restrict their capabilities, even as interest in Korean art accelerates. These challenges have prompted Korea to reorganize its support system for Korean-themed collections and galleries abroad, creating a more streamlined structure that aims to transform short-term enthusiasm into lasting cultural infrastructure.
Korean cultural heritage first appeared in overseas exhibitions as early as the 1960s, when most exchanges were limited to museum-to-museum loans. Over the decades, the Korea Foundation, operating under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, helped expand these initiatives as part of Korea's public diplomacy efforts. As interest in Korean art exhibitions abroad grew, the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism also allocated funding to support international shows. However, since the ministries' primary function is administrative, overseas museums increasingly preferred to collaborate directly with the National Museum of Korea (NMK) for access to its collections and curatorial expertise.
In 2022, Korea streamlined its support structure by consolidating responsibility for Korean collections, galleries, and exhibitions abroad under the NMK. Under this new framework, the NMK serves as the central hub for overseas museum support, coordinating object loans, offering curatorial and scholarly advice, and providing practical guidance on exhibition planning. This change has enabled more efficient and specialized assistance, allowing the NMK to respond more directly to requests from partner institutions. Museum officials note that in the past, the process often ended with sending objects abroad, but now the NMK also collaborates on online promotions and offers academic consultations tied to each project.
Each year, the museum accepts applications from overseas institutions seeking support, selecting organizations that align with the mission and purpose of its Korean gallery support program. Assistance is divided into short-term projects such as researching, cataloguing, and conserving Korean objects, and mid-to-long-term initiatives that include establishing or upgrading galleries, hiring dedicated staff, and organizing special exhibitions. In 2025, the NMK's support reached 24 museums in 13 countries. Leading museums in the United States and United Kingdom expanded their Korean galleries with NMK's help, while institutions in Germany, Canada, Vietnam, and New Zealand also received support for exhibitions, staff, and collection development.
Since the transition to the new system in 2022, demand from overseas museums has surged alongside global interest in Korean culture. The museum sees the current moment as an opportunity to shift from one-off, event-driven projects, such as those tied to the 1988 Olympics or diplomatic anniversaries, toward a more proactive, long-term strategy. Short-term projects have focused on conservation, research, and staff placements at select museums, with exhibitions and displays held in Switzerland and San Francisco, reflecting Korean art's growing global presence.
Strengthening overseas Korean galleries depends on building both the human and institutional capacity to sustain them over time. This is where the Korea Foundation plays a complementary role. Established in 1991 to promote international relations and cultural exchanges, the public diplomacy organization shifted its focus to developing global networks and expertise after Korean gallery projects were transferred to the NMK.
The Korea Foundation's annual Curator Workshop has become a leading pipeline for developing international curators capable of sustaining Korean art programming abroad. Since 1999, the program has brought over 440 curators to Korea, including the 2025 cohort with participants from institutions such as Tate Modern, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Palais de Tokyo, and the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi. This year's "Curating Korea" workshop took place in September, coinciding with a season when the global art world turns its attention to Korea for Frieze Seoul, Kiaf Seoul, and numerous other major exhibitions and events.
Robert Slifkin, professor at New York University's Institute of Fine Arts, who joined this year's program, said the workshop shifted his understanding of how Korean art is being presented. "The trip opened my eyes to the depth and intelligence of Korean art from antiquity to the present and it will certainly inform aspects of my own teaching and writing," he told The Korea Times. While the Korea Foundation notes that the workshop's impact cannot be measured in a single year because major exhibitions often require several years of planning, past participants illustrate how the program functions as a long-term catalyst.
Marsha Haufler, an East Asian art historian at the University of Kansas, and Kris Imants of the Spencer Museum of Art in Lawrence, Kansas, co-organized the traveling exhibition "The Power and Pleasure of Possessions in Korean Painted Screens" from 2016 to 2017. In Paris, Musée Cernuschi curator Maël Belec mounted three solo exhibitions of Korean artists – painter Kim Tschang-yeul, ceramicist Baeksan, and artist Yeesookyung – in 2023, following his involvement in the program.
Another key initiative from the Korea Foundation focuses on strengthening institutional capacity for Korean art abroad by helping major museums establish endowed curator positions dedicated to the field. Chee Yeon-soo, associate curator of Korean art at the Art Institute of Chicago, is one of four Korea Foundation-funded curators around the world. Appointed in July, Chee said the creation of her position has broadened internal awareness of Korean art within the museum and expanded opportunities for its preservation and display.
Even so, she noted that deep structural barriers remain. Audience expectations, donor interests, and funding priorities continue to be anchored in European art, shaping what museums can realistically pursue. "Korean art exhibitions are often prepared within a competitive environment," she said, referring to the constant need to justify resources and attention for non-Western collections. Chee noted that meaningful support is now available, including her nomination through the Korea Foundation endowed-curator program and the NMK's fellowship initiatives that dispatch short-term professional assistance from Korea.
"With globalization, awareness and support for East Asian art have certainly grown. Our department head is using this momentum to develop projects that raise the profile of East Asian art internationally and we're planning a joint exhibition with an institution in China. These initiatives would be difficult without institutional backing, but the level of support in recent years has been increasing, which is encouraging," she said. Even so, the museum's growing engagement with Korean art continues to expose critical gaps in the broader U.S. landscape, from uneven curatorial coverage of Korean collections to limited specialist infrastructure.
The next step for Korean galleries and collections abroad is moving from short-term loans to a more sustainable, collection-driven model. Instead of simply lending objects for special exhibitions, support is now directed at helping overseas museums build and research their own Korean collections with the guidance of dedicated Korean art curators. Because Korea's Cultural Heritage Protection Act restricts the permanent export of cultural properties over 50 years old, more recent strategies prioritize select loans of premodern works while encouraging active acquisition and commissioning of modern and contemporary Korean art abroad.
The special exhibition "Between and Beyond: A Centennial Journey," held at the Jeju Folklore and Natural History Museum from May to August, exemplifies a new phase in Korean-German museum collaboration. Jointly organized with the Dresden Museum of Ethnology, the project reunited more than 60 artifacts from the historic Stötzner Collection – many returning to public view in Korea for the first time in nearly a century. Dresden's ethnographic collection includes over 200 objects gathered by German explorer Walther Stötzner during his travels in Korea, particularly Jeju Island, in 1929.
Unlike the rare treasures that often headline international exhibitions, these artifacts are everyday items like tools, clothing, fishing gear, and ritual objects that capture daily life on Jeju some 100 years ago. "Some of the objects in this collection no longer exist in Korea itself, which underlines their significance as cultural testimonies of everyday life in the first half of the 20th century," said Sylvia Karges, Acting Director of Ethnographic Collections at the Dresden Museum of Ethnology. "We are deeply honored to make this part of history accessible to a broad Korean audience."
University museums, though less prominent, offer strong collections and research expertise that make them valuable partners for international collaboration. At Seoul National University (SNU) Museum, rising global interest has brought more overseas loan and image-licensing requests. Rather than focusing on rapid exhibition turnover, the museum has expanded its academic and research-oriented engagement abroad. Earlier this year, Lee So-young, director of the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, visited the SNU Museum to explore potential collaboration.
Korean diaspora and private-sector networks are playing an increasingly prominent role in promoting Korean art internationally. Diaspora gallerists and collectors facilitate the movement and recognition of Korean artworks, while Korean heritage board members and donors help influence acquisitions and institutional priorities from within. "The active involvement and leadership of Korean Americans are vital. We're already seeing strong engagement from Korean American board members at major New York institutions – including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Guggenheim and the Whitney," said Tina Kim, founder of Tina Kim Gallery in New York.
What lies ahead is not just a matter of adding more partners, but of creating a more coordinated and interconnected ecosystem. For Korean art to achieve sustainable and meaningful visibility globally, national institutions, universities, regional museums, diaspora professionals, and the private sector must operate as a cohesive network. This multi-layered structure is only now beginning to take shape, with the NMK anchoring the operational foundation for overseas exhibitions, the Korea Foundation developing curatorial and scholarly expertise, and university museums providing the academic research and intellectual context that grounds the field. Progress will depend not on the number of actors involved, but on how effectively these sectors coordinate their efforts to build infrastructure that outlasts trends and gives Korean art a stable, prominent place on the global stage.
