On July 1, the Ministry of Personnel Management opened a public recruitment process for a new director of the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea (MMCA). The term of current director Kim Sung-hee expires this September. As the search began, the names of several potential candidates quickly started circulating within the Korean art world.
2026.08.18
On July 26, 2026, the Art Services Business Registration System came into effect under the Art Promotion Act. Businesses operating in six categories—galleries, art auctions, art advisory services, art rental and sales, art appraisal, and art exhibitions—are now required to register with the relevant local authority.
2026.08.04
Art spaces are more than venues for exhibiting works of art. They serve as vital intermediaries that discover new artists, generate critical discourse, and connect audiences, markets, and institutions. Changes in these spaces, therefore, are not simply matters of individual organizations adopting different modes of operation. They are important indicators of how the contemporary art ecosystem has evolved and the direction in which it is moving.
2026.07.21
In Korean society, internationalization and globalization emerged as major national agendas between the late 1980s and the mid-1990s. The 1988 Seoul Olympics was a symbolic event through which Korea began to present itself to the international community in a more visible and active way. In the 1990s, Korea rapidly entered the global order through democratization, market liberalization, cultural exchange, and participation in international organizations.
2026.07.07
One of the most significant stories in the global art world recently has been Pace Gallery’s large-scale staff reductions and restructuring of its artist roster. Across the international art community, the news was widely interpreted as a sign of crisis within the mega-gallery model.
2026.06.23
Recently, major media outlets including The New York Times, the international contemporary art platform Ocula, and ARTnews have extensively reported on the large-scale restructuring of Pace Gallery, one of the world’s leading mega-galleries. In particular, remarks by Pace CEO Marc Glimcher describing the current gallery model as not merely “broken” but effectively “unfixable” have sent ripples throughout the global art world.
2026.06.09
One of the most powerful languages in contemporary art today is “critique.” Exhibitions question society, institutions dismantle power, and the curatorial produces discourse that moves across boundaries. Museums and biennales function as platforms for interpreting politics and society, history and identity.
2026.05.19
In contemporary art, the market determines the price of artworks. Galleries introduce artists, art fairs concentrate visibility and transactions, and auctions publicly confirm prices in the secondary market. As discussed in Part 7, these mechanisms together constitute the distribution system of today’s art market, revealing how prices are discovered, reiterated, and ultimately fixed.
2026.05.05
In contemporary art, galleries, art fairs, and auctions are no longer merely channels of distribution. They are the structures through which works enter the market, gain visibility, acquire prices, and determine the position of artists. Under the conditions of the post-contemporary, the importance of these structures becomes even more pronounced.
2026.04.21
The museum is the most stable institution in contemporary art and one of its most powerful mechanisms of selection. In contemporary art, the museum has functioned not simply as a space for collecting and exhibiting works, but as a key institution that determines what is recognized as contemporary art, which forms and languages acquire public visibility, and which exhibitions are granted institutional legitimacy.
2026.04.07
The discussion thus far converges on a single question. Where does the future of Korean contemporary art begin? Can that future be explained solely through more exhibitions, faster international expansion, larger market scales, and increasingly elaborate discursive rhetoric?
2026.03.24
When discussing the conditions of the post-contemporary, the first thing to guard against is the misunderstanding that it refers to a new style or a fashionable label. As discussed in the previous essays, the issue at stake is not the declaration of a new
2026.03.10
