National Museum uses foreign schools for cultural promotion

Kim Young-na, director of the National Museum of Korea, speaks during an interview with The Korea Times at her office in Seoul. / Korea Times photo by Shim Hyun-chul

Since Kim Young-na's appointment as director of the National Museum of Korea in February, her focus has shifted to promoting Korean studies.

During a recent interview, the 60-year-old art historian said that her museum has distributed a series of publications on specific topics related to Korean history to foreign universities and libraries virtually free of charge.

"There are very few institutions in this country that can do something like this. Universities, for example, have budgetary limitations. So we feel a sense of pride in being able to expand the reading list on Korea with the material that we have produced", Kim said.

She said that such efforts were important for not just nurturing potential scholars but also curators on Korea.

To this end, Kim will launch a two-week workshop for 15 foreign graduate school students majoring in Korean studies later this year. They will be invited to study artifacts at various museums across the country.

"I spent a long time studying abroad. I always felt that there was a glaring lack of books on Korean culture and history in other countries", the director said.

"In particular, there are very few books on the subject that can be utilized as textbooks in universities. The level of English in books on Korea is oftentimes insufficient".

Kim earned a Ph.D. in art history from Ohio State University and previously taught at Seoul National University.

During the interview, she showed a pictorial record of an exhibition of cultural ceremonies of the Joseon Kingdom (1392–1910) that had been sent to universities in the United States. The all-color publication contained fantastic photos and eloquent explanations in English.

As home to more than 150,000 treasures in its permanent collection, including 100 National Treasures, the museum is the largest in the country. After being housed in various locations, it moved to its current site in Yongsan, Seoul, in 2005.

It is a major tourist attraction, with the top art museum attendance numbers in Asia and ranked ninth in the world for 2010 with 3.06 million visitors. The result was released in the April edition of The Art Newspaper, a British publication that has surveyed art museum attendance figures for the past 15 years.

To cater to an increasing number of foreign visitors, the museum will revamp its English signs for each of the exhibits.

"We realize that our English signs have much room for improvement. By the end of the year, we hope to install improved versions to help the understanding of foreign visitors", she said.

Kim has actively cultivated exchanges with the world's most prestigious museums. A key source of inspiration was her late father Kim Jae-won, the founding director of the museum who served from 1945 through 1970.

"Since our first overseas exhibition in 1957, we have had more than 100 exhibitions abroad", Kim said. "Some of our pieces will be exhibited in Sao Paulo, Brazil, this year. In the coming years, we will have exhibitions at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York and other major museums in Philadelphia, Houston and Paris".

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By Do Je-hae