In 2025, two of Korea’s most prominent art figures have returned to lead major cultural institutions. Yoo Hong-jun, former Administrator of the Cultural Heritage Administration, has been appointed Director of the National Museum of Korea, while Yoon Bum-mo, former Director of the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMCA), has taken the helm as the new CEO of the Gwangju Biennale. Both are respected art historians, critics, and curators with long careers in the field. Their return has inspired expectations of “stability” and “experience.”

Yet today’s cultural landscape faces fundamentally different challenges and opportunities than in decades past. In this context, their return must not be a simple replay of the past, but a critical inflection point—a chance to restructure systems and strategies with the benefit of accumulated experience.
 


Yoo Hong-jun’s “Overseas Touring Exhibitions”

At his inaugural press conference, Director Yoo announced plans to promote overseas touring exhibitions featuring artifacts and curated content from the National Museum of Korea. This proposal continues the cultural diplomacy strategy he championed during his tenure at the Cultural Heritage Administration. However, the cultural dynamics of the 2020s require a new set of tools and logic.

First, cultural globalization today is not about “sending” heritage abroad, but about making Korea a destination that people around the world seek out. BTS, Squid Game, and global K-drama hits on Netflix have already transformed Korea into a cultural pilgrimage site. By contrast, the National Museum of Korea remains far behind this trend.
 
Second, touring exhibitions are expensive and often inefficient. Tens of billions of won are poured into transportation, insurance, installation, and marketing, but many of these exhibitions yield only short-term attention and a few commemorative photographs. One example is the large-scale Korean cultural exhibition held in France during the 2017 “Korea–France Year of Cultural Exchange,” which drew fewer visitors than expected.
 
Third, instead of focusing on exporting exhibitions, it is far more urgent to make the museum itself a compelling global space worth visiting. In the first half of 2024, the National Museum of Korea welcomed 94,951 international visitors, accounting for only 6.1% of its total 1.55 million visitors during that period. While this marked a 34.5% increase over the same period in 2023, the share of foreign visitors remains low—between 5 and 7% of an annual audience that reached 3.78 million. Despite its status as Asia’s largest museum, the institution still falls short of international standards in multilingual guidance, online archives, accessibility information, and global digital services.
 
It is time to shift the museum’s resources from “exporting exhibitions” to building a destination-oriented ecosystem. The future of cultural globalization lies not in movement but in becoming a destination.
 


Gwangju Biennale: A Biennale Without an Archive Is a Museum Without a Collection

Yoon Bum-mo has been involved with the Gwangju Biennale since its inception. He curated the 20th anniversary special exhibition in 2015 and has stated his intention to “artistically elevate the Gwangju spirit” during his new term. But the problem today is not one of “spirit”—it is one of record.

Launched in 1995 as Asia’s first international biennale, the Gwangju Biennale now has a 30-year history. Yet, a proper archive system remains virtually nonexistent.
 
Key materials such as past editions’ artistic directors, themes, artist lists, floorplans, installation views, catalogs, critical essays, press kits, and photo documentation are not searchable through the official website or any unified portal. Among the 14 main and special exhibitions held between 1995 and 2023, many are entirely inaccessible online, with broken links and missing PDFs. Existing records are fragmented and inconsistent, falling far short of what researchers, journalists, and curators need to access and study.

This is not merely an issue of negligence—it is a structural threat to the identity and sustainability of the biennale itself.
 
Global biennials like Venice, Documenta, and Shanghai have already institutionalized their exhibition archives. These archives, available through their official websites, serve as foundational databases for future research and curatorial development.
 
For the Gwangju Biennale to reclaim international relevance, it must prioritize building a comprehensive, digital, and structured archive system.
 
First, it must develop an indexed digital archive including artist rosters, curatorial proposals, floorplans, media coverage, video records, and official documentation.
 
Second, the archive should be multilingual—especially English-accessible—and offer layered storage of critical writings and scholarly publications.
 
Third, it should evolve into a research platform, enabling data-driven curatorial strategies and facilitating collaboration with academia.
 
Without such an archive ecosystem, the “Gwangju spirit” risks becoming nothing more than a slogan.
 


Experience Is an Asset, But It’s Not Enough

Yoo Hong-jun’s 『My Exploration of Cultural Heritage』 introduced cultural appreciation to a wide audience. Yoon Bum-mo is known for translating the trauma of 1980s Gwangju into curatorial language. But the demands of today’s cultural institutions go far beyond interpretation or connoisseurship.
 
What is now required are leadership frameworks that embrace organizational governance, digital innovation, global networking, ESG awareness, and public accountability.
 


Leading institutions around the world have already adapted.

Tate Modern uses AI to analyze visitor flows and optimize programming. MoMA has expanded its curatorial scope to include digital archiving and NFT acquisition.

In contrast, many Korean institutions remain stuck in a revolving door of cultural gatekeeping and legacy appointments. While the return of seasoned figures may offer stability, it must not signal a regression into outdated models. Their true task is to convert experience into foresight—and to use it to reimagine institutional futures.


 
Globalizing Korean Art Requires Better Systems, Not More Shows

What Korean art needs to reach the world is not more touring exhibitions. It needs a systemic cultural infrastructure: reliable content production mechanisms, transparent operations, sustainable international collaborations, and the coexistence of scholarship and critical discourse.
 
The global art world is no longer content to merely “see Korea”—it now seeks to learn from Korea. To meet this expectation, Korean museums and biennales must rebuild themselves from the inside out—according to global standards.
 
What matters now is not how many exhibitions we produce, but what we leave behind—and how we structure it.
 
Now is the time for these “old boys” to redefine the meaning of their return—not as restoration, but as transformation. Their true legacy will not lie in repeating the past, but in leading the structural reinvention of Korea’s cultural institutions for the generations to come.