Bohwagak, a private collection, and a name in 1971

Museums, the notes write, have been shifting from institutions centred on facilities toward institutions centred on activity, and the direction that matters is to include a varied public. Kansong Art Museum is, in this telling, the first private art museum, founded when Jeon Hyeong-pil gathered cultural properties under Japanese colonial rule, and it has continued research-centred exhibitions. Jeon, they write, bought scattered heritage with his own money and founded Bohwagak. He did not only collect: he researched and arranged the holdings systematically, and also worked at education and scholarships. In 1971 Bohwagak took the name Kansong Art Museum, and the relics were opened to the public. Those identifications stay as the notes give them.

Kim Hong-do, a fan-shaped Geumgang, and a research-centred house

Kansong, they write, has been research-centred, and has long held exhibitions by genre. From the 2000s more varied shows increased, and research exhibitions on genres that had drawn little attention also became popular. Among the holdings, works by Kim Hong-do and Shin Yun-bok are popular at every exhibition. Jeong Seon’s Geumgangnaesan, they add, is a true-view landscape — a late-Joseon landscape painted from actual scenery — on a fan-shaped surface, the peaks and valleys of Inner Geumgang rendered in ink alone.

Forty years, a plaza in Dongdaemun, and an inclusive turn

From the late 1990s, they write, museums grew in number and became representative public cultural facilities. Their functions had been limited to exhibition, education, collecting, conservation and research; recently they also provide cultural-arts services. An inclusive museum should receive a varied public; cultural-welfare services for people on low incomes are their representative case, and visitors are moving from a passive public toward people who take part in composing programmes. A museum is a hub of local culture, and the distinctiveness of space and programme is stressed. Space marketing, they define, is a total marketing that draws an audience through space and remakes space through experience.

A first external exhibition in 40 years at Dongdaemun Design Plaza is judged a positive step toward an inclusive museum. Online shows and externally planned exhibitions have widened access, they conclude, and also contribute to children’s visual literacy and a sense of self-efficacy. Those dates stay as the notes record them. The same Korean report, at fuller length, is on CampusDown.

Sources

1. The notes, a student museum report on Kansong Art Museum, with Jeon Hyeong-pil’s Bohwagak, the 1971 opening, and a first show outside in 40 years at DDP left as the notes record them.

Last updated: 15 November 2026