What Do Museums Pursue?

Contributors : Kim Namin, Kim Youngmin, Shim Bo-Seon, Nur Hanim Mohamed Khairuddin, Cho Seon Ryeong, Rodney Harrison, Choon Choi

The National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea (MMCA) has published the MMCA Research Series What Do Museums Pursue?: Art, Museums, and Publicness. Building on the discussions from the 2024 international symposium, this volume examines the idea of publicness—the foundational raison d‘être of art and museums—from multiple disciplinary perspectives. Contributions from scholars, including political science, sociology, and art history, are organized into three sections: Part I, The Concept of Publicness; Part II, Publicness as the Principle of Practice; and Part III, The Site of Museums& Publicness.

In the introductory essay, Kim Namin (Curator, MMCA) emphasizes that the meaning of publicness shifts depending on context, making conceptual clarity essential. She argues that the meaning of publicness operates across a spectrum depending on the museum’s functions and activities. Part I, The Concept of Publicness, begins with an essay by Kim Youngmin (Professor, Department of Political Science & International Relations, Seoul National University), who examines “representative publicness” and “rational publicness” and proposes “artistic publicness” as an alternative concept. He emphasizes that a national museum differs from private galleries that pursue commercial profit, and that its engagement with contemporary art—known for its critical and subversive qualities—distinguishes it as well from state publicity agencies. Following this, Shim Bo-Seon (Professor, Graduate School of Communication and Arts, Yonsei University) foregrounds discourse and debate as core to publicness and explores the museum’s potential to serve as a contentious public sphere. He reflects on both the fragility and the indispensable value of publicness while examining the responsibilities of museums.

Part II, Publicness as the Principle of Practice, explores how publicness manifests through concrete museum activities. Nur Hanim Mohamed Khairuddin (General Manager, People of Remarkable Talents (PORT), Perak State Government, Malaysia) introduces case studies of public art projects that play dynamic roles in urban environments and proposes strategies for sustaining contemporary art. Cho Seon Ryeong (Professor, Department of Art Culture and Image, Pusan National University) examines the potential of exhibitions to form “temporary communities,” discussing how museum exhibitions can function as spaces that give sensory and spatial form to social meaning.

Part III, The Site of Museums’ Publicness, examines how the meaning of publicness is being reconfigured amid global challenges such as climate change. Rodney Harrison (Professor of Heritage Studies, University College London) reassesses the relationship between museums and the environment, arguing that public museums must actively envision ecological futures. Emphasizing that planetary crises require interdisciplinary collaboration, he contends that museums should imagine socially and ecologically just futures from planetary and more-than-human perspectives. Choon Choi (Professor, Department of Architecture & Architectural Engineering, Seoul National University) proposes directions for rethinking museum architecture beyond its traditional authoritative character, envisioning it instead as an open space where social imagination can operate. He underscores the need for museums to function not as mechanical institutions but as flexible and generative sites.

This new volume reexamines publicness as the essential foundation of the museum‘s existence and offers meaningful points of reference for national and public art institutions as they explore their future directions. Published in Korean and English. Edited by Kim Namin.