The National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea (MMCA) has announced the ”2026 Art Bank Acquisition Open Call”. Applications will be accepted from February 9 to February 27, with the final selection results scheduled to be announced in July. The program is regarded as a representative example of how public museum acquisitions function as an institutional mechanism supporting the contemporary art market in Korea.

Since its launch in 2005, the Art Bank has operated on the basis of artwork acquisitions by a public museum, linking collection building with storage management, exhibitions, and loan programs. Rather than functioning solely as a repository, the system is designed to circulate artworks across a wide range of public settings—including government offices, cultural institutions, and educational facilities. Through this structure, the Art Bank has contributed to expanding public access to art and broadening opportunities for artistic engagement, establishing a record of measurable institutional outcomes.
 
The 2026 open call is open to a wide range of contemporary art practices, including painting, sculpture, photography, and video, limited to works produced within the past ten years. Eligible applicants include individual artists or collectives of Korean nationality who have held exhibitions at domestic or international galleries or museums within the last five years. Selected works will be formally incorporated into the Art Bank collection through public museum acquisition, with evaluations based on artistic merit, market price appropriateness, and overall completeness of the work.
 
A notable feature of this year’s program is its single-track operation under the MMCA Art Bank, without a separate Government Art Bank acquisition process. This approach is understood as an effort to improve operational efficiency and reinforce consistency in selection criteria. A separate, restricted open call for artists with disabilities is scheduled to take place in the second half of the year.

The Role and Accumulated Achievements of the Art Bank
 
Since its inception, the Art Bank’s collection—built through public museum acquisitions—has extended well beyond the notion of static ownership. Comprising several thousand works, the collection has been loaned and exhibited across government offices, public institutions, local cultural facilities, overseas diplomatic missions, and selected corporate spaces, ensuring sustained visibility throughout the public sphere. This circulation model has played a meaningful role in expanding the social reach of contemporary art beyond museum walls.

In addition, special exhibitions and curated presentations centered on the Art Bank collection have provided opportunities to reassess and contextualize accumulated works. Spanning painting, sculpture, photography, installation, and video, the collection has been recognized for presenting Korean contemporary art not as a linear narrative but as a multi-layered archive reflecting diverse artistic trajectories.
 
From a market perspective, the public museum acquisition framework has also performed a stabilizing function. Inclusion in a public collection has contributed to establishing professional credibility within an artist’s career trajectory, and in certain cases, has served as a reference point for assessing market value.
 

 
Market Implications and Future Challenges
 
The structure through which public museums acquire works, incorporate them into collections, and circulate them through exhibitions and loans has helped maintain a baseline level of demand during periods of contraction in the private art market. Amid heightened uncertainty across the contemporary art sector, public museum acquisitions can be interpreted as a minimal institutional foundation supporting the continuity of artistic production.
 
Nevertheless, questions remain regarding the broader impact of such systems on the market as a whole—particularly concerning transparency, fairness in price-setting, and the legitimacy of public acquisitions as market benchmarks. Continued scrutiny of evaluation criteria, pricing methodologies, and long-term operational strategies will be essential moving forward.

MMCA has stated that the 2026 acquisition program aims to secure a diverse range of contemporary artworks and to share them within the public domain, thereby contributing to a sustainable cycle within the art ecosystem. For video works, applicants are required to submit files separately in addition to online registration via the Art Bank website. Detailed guidelines are available through official channels.
 
As the program unfolds, attention will focus on how public museum acquisitions continue to shape the structural dynamics of Korea’s art market, and whether this year’s open call will introduce new standards or directions for institutional collecting practices.

References

• MMCA Press Release
• Art Bank Official Website