Deregulation and the Museum and Art Gallery Support Act: Focusing on the Museum’s Legal Definition and Classification

Until recently, there have been constant calls for a complete revision of the Museum and Art Gallery Support Act. At the center is the argument that the legal definition and conceptual system for museums and art galleries should be corrected. This paper tried to clarify why the legal definition, scope of application, and classification system of museums and art galleries are always and still important issues. The government-wide deregulation stance and the quantitative expansion of cultural facilities at the cultural policy level, which began in earnest in the 1990s, were factors that drove the process of enacting and revising the law. In the process, the policy direction of museums and art galleries, quantitative expansion through deregulation, was established, and active adjustment of the legal definition, scope of application, and classification system became the core strategy of deregulation. In other words, the provisions on the definition, scope, and classification system were repeatedly revised to maximize the effect of quantitative expansion by lowering the threshold of legal boundaries of museums and art galleries as much as possible and expanding the scope as possible. As a result, the problems caused by the revision have been repeatedly pointed out since the 2000s, but the revision for the re-establishment of the conceptual system was considered contrary to deregulation and was not made. And the confusion of the conceptual system in law became and amplified the confusion of reality. Based on existing studies, this paper attempted to problemize the confusion caused by the policy stance of deregulation into specific legal issues.