Art of Korea
at the Metropolitan Museum of Art
So What?
Museums shape the stories we believe about art and culture.
Museums are often trusted as objective sources of cultural knowledge. Yet the stories presented in galleries are shaped by countless curatorial decisions about what to display, how to organize it, and how to explain it.
By making these decisions visible, this project encourages visitors to engage more critically with museum narratives and recognize the active role museums play in shaping cultural understanding.
Project Overview
Museum galleries are not neutral spaces.
Every object placement, label, and curatorial decision contributes to the ways visitors understand art, history, and culture.
This project examines how Art of Korea at The Metropolitan Museum of Art constructs narratives about Korean art through space, text, and interpretation.
By making these often-invisible structures visible, the project encourages visitors to look beyond individual artifacts and consider how museums actively construct cultural narratives.
*This project is based on the MET Art of Korea gallery as observed between January and May 2026.
Methods
Three approaches to an invisible structure
Each method below offers a different lens on the same gallery. Together, they reveal how space, history, and language work in concert to shape interpretation.
