Art of Korea at the Met
Making Curatorial Structures Visible
Art of Korea at the Met: Making Curatorial Structures Visible is a digital humanities project that examines Art of Korea, The Metropolitan Museum of Art's permanent galleries dedicated to Korean art, as an interpretive environment rather than a neutral container of artifacts.
The project explores how museums construct meaning through curatorial decisions, including object placement, exhibition design, and interpretive language. By making these often-invisible structures visible, the project encourages visitors to think critically about how museum narratives are created and communicated.
Research Question
How do object placement, gallery layout, and curatorial text in
Art of Korea at The Metropolitan Museum of Art
construct narratives about Korean art?
Research Process
Digital Humanities Approach
This project combines multiple digital humanities methods to examine Art of Korea from different perspectives. Rather than relying on a single visualization, the website integrates spatial analysis, historical research, text analysis, and interactive experimentation to investigate how curatorial meaning is produced and communicated.
Together, these approaches reveal patterns that are often difficult to recognize during a physical museum visit.
Literature Review
The project was informed by scholarship in museum studies, art history, and digital humanities. Particular attention was given to research on curatorial interpretation, exhibition design, museum narratives, and Franco Moretti's concept of distant reading. These theoretical frameworks helped shape both the research question and analytical approach.
Field Observation
This project began with direct observation of Art of Korea at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. From January to May 2026, multiple site visits were conducted to document object placement, gallery layout, interpretive labels, exhibition organization, and visitor circulation patterns. Photographs, sketches, floor plans, and field notes were collected to create a detailed record of the gallery environment.
The gallery itself was treated as a primary source, providing the foundation for all subsequent analysis and digital visualization.
Digital Humanities Approach
This project combines multiple digital humanities methods to examine Art of Korea from different perspectives. Rather than relying on a single visualization, the website integrates spatial analysis, historical research, text analysis, and interactive experimentation to investigate how curatorial meaning is produced and communicated.
Together, these approaches reveal patterns that are often difficult to recognize during a physical museum visit.
Literature Review
The project was informed by scholarship in museum studies, art history, and digital humanities. Particular attention was given to research on curatorial interpretation, exhibition design, museum narratives, and Franco Moretti's concept of distant reading. These theoretical frameworks helped shape both the research question and analytical approach.
Limitations
This project focuses on curatorial structures rather than visitor behavior.
While the website can reveal intended pathways of interpretation, it cannot fully capture how individual visitors experience, understand, or respond to the gallery. Likewise, digital visualizations cannot completely represent atmosphere, scale, lighting conditions, movement, or emotional responses within the museum environment.
The project therefore analyzes the gallery's interpretive framework rather than measuring visitor reception directly.
Ethical Considerations
This project engages critically with the interpretive structures of Art of Korea without claiming to represent the official views of The Metropolitan Museum of Art. All analysis reflects the researcher's interpretation based on field observation, publicly available museum information, and digital humanities methods. Label texts, wall texts, object descriptions, and other museum materials reproduced on this website remain the intellectual property of The Metropolitan Museum of Art and are included for educational and research purposes only.
Credits
Clara Eunyoung Chang
HS313 Digital Humanities Capstone Project
Taejae University · Spring 2026
References & Sources
The Metropolitan Museum of Art Collection Database
The Metropolitan Museum of Art Korean Gallery
Literature Review
- Alpers, S. (1991). The museum as a way of seeing. In I. Karp & S. D. Lavine (Eds.), Exhibiting cultures: The poetics and politics of museum display (pp. 25–32). Smithsonian Institution Press.
- Bal, M. (1996). Double exposures: The subject of cultural analysis. Routledge.
- Bennett, T. (1995). The birth of the museum: History, theory, politics. Routledge.
- Drucker, J. (2021). The digital humanities coursebook: An introduction to digital methods for research and scholarship. Routledge.
- Duncan, C. (1995). Civilizing rituals: Inside public art museums. Routledge.
- Gazi, A. (2014). Exhibition ethics: An overview of major issues. Journal of Conservation and Museum Studies, 12(1), Article 4. https://doi.org/10.5334/jcms.1021213
- Medaković, J., Atanacković Jeličić, J., Ecet, D., Nedučin, D., & Krklješ, M. (2024). The interplay between spatial layout and visitor paths in modern museum architecture. Buildings, 14(7), Article 2147. https://doi.org/10.3390/buildings14072147
- MuseumNext. (2024). What makes a great museum label? The science and art of exhibition text.
- Ravelli, L. J. (2006). Museum texts: Communication frameworks. Routledge.
- Reitstätter, L., Galter, K., & Bakondi, F. (2022). Looking to read: How visitors use exhibit labels in the art museum. Visitor Studies, 25(2), 127–150. https://doi.org/10.1080/10645578.2021.2018251
- Said, E. W. (1978). Orientalism. Pantheon Books.
- Smithsonian Institution. (2021). Guide to interpretive writing for exhibitions.
- Western Australian Museum. (n.d.). Text and labels in museum exhibitions.