Korean art exhibitions in American museums are undergoing a significant transformation, shifting from traditional artifacts to contemporary works as cultural institutions respond to the global rise of Korean popular culture. This evolution reflects both practical limitations in acquiring historical Korean art and growing international interest in Korea's modern creative landscape, fundamentally changing how museums present Korean culture to American audiences.
The foundation for Korean art in American museums was established during the 1990s and 2000s through vigorous support from the Korea Foundation. Major permanent Korean galleries opened across the United States, including the Arts of Korea Gallery at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art in 1998, where Soyoung Lee began her career as the museum's first curator of Korean art. During this period, focus centered primarily on pre-20th century Korean collections that museums had already built, with the Korea Foundation and National Museum of Korea supporting traditional art through loans, exhibitions, research, and curatorial residencies.
However, this approach soon encountered natural limitations, as Lee, who now leads the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, explained. The available body of pre-20th century Korean works was finite, even within Korea itself, and growing ethical concerns emerged over what artifacts should or should not leave the country. Museums quickly realized that to expand their Korean collections and programming, they couldn't continue acquiring traditional art due to limited availability.
Many institutions gradually pivoted toward modern and contemporary artists whose work reflected a living Korea. This shift, born of necessity, soon aligned with a broader cultural phenomenon: the global ascent of Korean popular culture, from K-pop to Korean cuisine, which drew unprecedented attention to the country's creative landscape. Lee observed that international awareness of Korean contemporary art has been heightened by the explosion of pop culture over the last five to ten years, with the launch of Frieze Seoul in 2022 bringing an influx of visitors from the United States, Europe, and across Asia who have taken notice of Korea's diverse artistic activities.
Rising alongside this attention is the growing visibility of Koreans and members of the Korean diaspora throughout the global art world, from curators and collectors to board members shaping institutional decisions. Museums are now more conscious than ever of developments in Korea, making it logical for them to broaden their Korean exhibitions to reflect and build upon public attraction to contemporary culture.
This new direction is evident in recent Korean art exhibitions, notable for both their quantity and expanded curatorial focus. Major shows 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. Significantly, the Metropolitan Museum's 2024 Genesis Facade Commission went to Lee Bul, the first artist living and working in Asia to receive this honor, reflecting the current influence of Korean contemporary art.
The momentum has continued throughout 2025, supported by the Korean government in what Hyonjeong Kim Han, senior curator of Asian art at the Denver Art Museum, describes as even more active support than what the Japan Foundation provided for Japanese arts and cultural exchange in the 1980s and 1990s. At a time when federal cultural funding faces cuts, leaving specialized fields like Asian art increasingly vulnerable, this sustained external support enables curators to pursue projects that might not otherwise make it onto museum calendars.
The Denver Art Museum has focused on placing Joseon-era ceramics in conversation with both modern and contemporary art and Korean diasporic identity. "Perfectly Imperfect: Korean Buncheong Ceramics" centers on buncheong stoneware, a defining ceramic tradition from the late 14th to 16th centuries, distinguished by its milky white slip and freely expressive surface designs. Kim Han explained that as public awareness of Korean culture has grown, the museum wanted to introduce an art form that may be less familiar to many, yet continues to resonate with and inspire contemporary artists.
Unlike the perfectly polished crafts of its era, buncheong celebrates a beauty that breaks from convention, a sensibility that deeply connects with contemporary art, according to Park Ji-young, National Museum of Korea fellow of Korean art at the Denver Art Museum. The exhibition places more than 40 buncheong masterpieces in dialogue with contemporary reinterpretations of their techniques and palettes, reflected in works by artists such as Kim Whanki, Yun Hyong-keun, and Lee Kang-hyo.
The museum staged another ambitious Korean exhibition this summer with "Lunar Phases: Korean Moon Jars," the first institutional exhibition worldwide devoted exclusively to these vessels since the National Palace Museum of Korea's 2005 showcase. The exhibition assembled six 18th-century jars with 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 heritage symbol and meditation on identity.
Park noted that through the moon jar, the museum explored how Korean diaspora artists' sense of homeland could find creative expression, discovering that this diasporic sentiment deeply resonated with the broader American public. In a nation of immigrants, a distinctly Korean motif became a mirror for shared American feelings about identity and belonging.
Meanwhile, the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts, celebrated the reopening of its Korean gallery in May after a 13-year hiatus. The newly named Yu Kil-Chun Gallery of Korean Art and Culture reflects a unique history not found elsewhere in American institutions. Yu (1856-1914), a reformist scholar who traveled to the United States in 1883 as part of Korea's first diplomatic mission, remained in Salem as a student and later donated his personal belongings to the museum with handwritten notes explaining their use, contributing to the museum's founding Korean collection.
The gallery's reopening revives one of America's earliest Korean collections, according to Kim Ji-yeon, the museum's curator of Korean art. The exhibition appropriately begins with Yu's banggeon (indoor scholar's hat), deunggeori (rattan vest), and shoes representing the everyday attire of late 19th-century Joseon elites. What stands out most is the breadth of media on display—a panorama of Korean material art and craft capturing 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, including 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 its makers' names; 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 "K-Pop 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 Yu Kil-Chun Gallery reopening is "Jung Yeondoo: Building Dreams," a contemporary photography exhibition presented in the 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, further demonstrating the evolving presentation of Korean culture in American museums.
