Study on Changes and Characteristics of the SeMA’s Non-Korean Artists’ Acquisition from 1991 to 2020

The purpose of this paper is to study the changes in and characteristics of SeMA’s acquisitions of non-Korean artists from 1991 to 2020 through a periodical perspective. In the 1990s, SeMA's collections of non-Korean artists developed around crafts and ceramic art, and artists from Western and select Asian countries were emphasized. In the 2000s, printworks related to the Seoul Olympics made by important global artists comprised the highest proportion of the museum's non-Korean acquisitions, and a wider variety of genres were collected, emphasizing painting and photography. Also, similar to the 1990s, in this period Western and Asian artists dominated the museum’s collection, though non-Western artists increasingly helped to diversify it. In the 2010s, SeMA showed even greater diversification in the artistic genres it collected, including painting, photography, installation, and new media, and emerging global artists were collected. As for the artists’ nationalities, there was a tendency in this period to collect works by multinational artists, including those from the Middle East. In addition, increasing emphasis was placed on ‘Korea’ and Korea-born foreign artists, a trend that had continued from the 2000s. Developing a discourse of globalization centered on local government art museums, this study examines the characteristics of non-Korean artists acquired by SeMA’s from the perspective of time.