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Contemporary art and Feminism

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Study Group 1 │ On Writing Timelines of Korean Art: The Roundtable

To celebrate the launch of the MMCA Research Lab, an online platform in Korean and English dedicated to sharing knowledge and information about contemporary Korean art, a related forum called "Study Group 1. Timelines and Features of Korean Art" was held at MMCA Seoul on March 29, 2024.
At the Study Group, MMCA's in-house researchers and affiliated scholars regularly present the results of collaborative research on selected themes.

Part I, "Timelines and Features of Korean Art," the Korean Art Timelines produced by the MMCA Research Lab were the main topic, and the session also explored the potential of expanding art history research through chronology.
In Part II, participants shared their views on "Contemporary Art and Feminism," the first "Features (thematic study)" of the MMCA Research Lab, and current issues of feminist art in Korea.

The participants including Cho Soojin, Kang Min-gi, Kim Yisoon, Kwon Heangga, Lim Shan and Shin Chunghoon, all of whom participated in the MMCA Research Lab's timeline research, discussed the future strategy and direction of the MMCA Research Lab as a digital platform, focusing on their prioritized format and content of the timeline they focused on, the distinguishing features and limitations of Korean art research through timeline studies, and the derivative methods of art history research focusing on the chronology.

*moderated by Tiffany Yeon Chae (Curator, MMCA)

* * *

Question 1. Challenges of Korean Art Timelines

Tiffany Yeon Chae: I personally feel that it's very refreshing and exciting to hear the research that we've been preparing for about four years in the Research Lab come out offline like this. The content so far can be considered a condensed presentation of what we have on our website. Now, I have prepared six detailed questions.
This is my first question. A major characteristic of timeline description is, as Kang Min-gi and Lim Shan mentioned earlier, having to choose what to insert based on the accumulated research done by senior researchers. I was wondering if you could share any limits or difficulties you felt in the process of writing the timeline based on existing art history research. I think Kang, who wrote the earliest part of the timeline, will have something to say.

Kang Min-gi: I covered the earliest part of the timeline, from 1945 to 1953. This period has been described in the past mainly as background description when doing research on individual artists. So when I tried to actually write a timeline, I found a lot of art groups were formed at a certain time, and then they disappeared in a few months, and then other groups were formed, and then they were integrated. It was a very complicated situation. So it was extremely difficult to find the context of exactly what month they were created and how they were integrated.
A lot of people would see this timeline and once it's made, it will be observed for a long time, so I felt a lot of pressure. Also, this period was just after the liberation of Korea, and there weren't many materials left from the Korean War period.

For example, the names are like the “Korean Artist Federation” or “Korean Art Alliance.” So in the records, their names are mixed up a lot of the time. It was very difficult to figure out how to write the timeline with the most objective data possible. Because it was a period when there was not much data, if I secured a lot of data, I ended up writing a long description, and if I couldn't get any data, I could only write a short description, but just because the description is short, it doesn't mean the event is light in art history.

For a certain event, I wanted to explain it longer because it was important, but I couldn't because I had no data. But when people look at the timeline, they might think that the ones with long descriptions are important. That was the difficulty that I had. So I think finding primary data was the most difficult thing about writing about the period I was in charge of.

Shin Chunghoon: I think we can think about it a little bit in terms of the difference between a period where there's not a lot of data and a period where there's a lot of data. So when I was writing a timeline for the 1990s, I naturally looked at what had already been written. And I think this is actually not just a problem for the 1990s. This was something that came up while we researchers were talking together, that there's a risk of reproducing a dominant narrative that's constantly in the spotlight. If you follow the existing discussion, then, of course, the dominant approaches or perspectives become strongly entrenched, and any timeline that reflects that will inevitably go back to that narrative. The researchers and I agreed that we had these risks.

So I guess you could say that's definitely a limitation in and of itself. Of course, I'm drawing on existing discussions so that the timeline doesn't become an arbitrary selection, but because of that, limitations inevitably occur. At the same time, there are some things that I would say are possibilities, like events that don't make it into the timeline. They could be the beginning of a new narrative.

I personally felt great pressure when I was writing this timeline, but one of the things that kind of took some of the pressure off was that I kept reminding myself, “This timeline is on the web. It's subject to change.” The fact that it could constantly change, be altered, and be added, and the medium itself influenced the way we wrote and organized the timeline.

Question 2. Key Issues of the MMCA Research Lab Timelines

Tiffany Yeon Chae: Although I'd like to touch a little bit more on writing the timeline on a website, I'm going to move on to the second question. I'm wondering if any of you who have worked on art history timelines might be able to comment on what you've included that's particularly new or different from what's already out there, and how that relates to the nature of the timeline being on the Internet. Can any of you talk about this?

Kwon Heangga: First of all, I'd like to say the difference that I noticed once it was on the website. We had only seen it in visualized form on A4 paper or in an Excel file. But when it popped up on the website, I was blown away. First of all, it's very three-dimensional. So you click each month and there you see each term and the concept of each term. You can capture the temporality that comes from the calendar. If you click the term, you see its meaning, and next to that are related terms, related concepts, and related events. Ultimately, I realized that the medium's conditions made this timeline incredibly different from the traditional timeline.
The other thing that struck me was that I could see 1,000 visuals all at once. I'm a researcher, but it's hard to see primary sources like this from other periods outside of my research so quickly. The visuality of 1,000 visuals combined with the timeline and made it look very holistic. So the possibilities of the medium were what made this timeline different. Then there are related links.

So there are “Related” and “Find More.” It's organized in this way. For example, if I search for “Bando Gallery” and then click “When Bando Gallery was founded,” I see “Lee Daiwon” and “Hyundai Hwarang,” which are related to “Bando Gallery.”
At the same time, there's a “Find More” menu that doesn't seem to be particularly related, and “PLATEAU” comes up. In my perspective, the “Find More” part is very confusing. I wonder what algorithm is making these contents show on “Find More.” An expanded “Find More” that I couldn't even imagine keeps showing up.

So I think about this with both concern and potential. The concern is that this could be very misunderstood by foreigners. It could be misunderstood by people who don't know art history. The potential is that there are a lot of possibilities of expansion there that we as researchers can think of things that we hadn't thought of. So there are a lot of possibilities that we can utilize. I think the difference from the traditional timeline is the conditions of the medium.

The other thing is that in our narrative method, as I mentioned earlier, we focused on the founding of the major groups or activities, so most of the center of gravity is weakened, so to speak. It's homogenized, like Cho Soojin said.

In a way, this could be a distortion of history. It could be another deconstruction of history or it could be another possibility. I think the difference from the existing timeline is that ours is very homogenized.

Thirdly, the content that is in there, while also incorporating existing research results, is a combination of what has been written and what hasn't been written. It's a combination of what has been researched and what needs to be researched.
To be honest, we put in things that we know should be studied, but we couldn't put in things that we couldn't see. I think that's something that will continue to expand as researchers in each medium study it and fill it in.

Kim Yisoon: Kwon Heangga talked about the way that she looked at the overall timeline and the challenges and advantages it has. I want to talk about a very small part of it. I mentioned earlier that I paid a bit more attention to female artists in the 1970s.
If you look at the timeline, you'll notice that some parts of it are very heavily illustrated while other parts are very briefly written without any images. You have to realize that it's not because they're not historically important, but because there was a very weak gaze on them in that era.

For example, I've been doing a lot of research on female artists in the 1970s. most of the activities of the so-called important artists are described at length, even posting specific photos, but the stories about female artists groups are described very briefly, almost as a passing remark. It was often hard to get more than a date or who was involved. So when you do research, don't just think It must not be important because it's mentioned so briefly. Read between the lines and ask why it had to be described briefly.

Then I think you'll be able to get a new perspective on the history of that time. In fact, groups such as the “Korean Sculptress Association,” “Korea Woman Fine Arts Association,” “Women Eastern Painters Association,” and “Korea Society of Women Craft Designers” were founded in the 1970s.
So there was a big clamor. There were women's voices. But no one paid attention to them at the time. It wasn't until almost a decade later, in the late 1980s that people really started to listen to their voices. Of course, it's a completely different situation now. So I came to think that we need to look more closely even if the timeline description is brief.

Lim Shan: The difference of the timeline was talked about earlier, but I'm having a bit of a hard time talking about its difference with existing timelines because I can't think of a timeline that deals with Korean art, specifically art in the 1980s, which is the period that I worked on. But if you look at the timelines that Western people made when studying Western art history, it goes beyond a certain refinement. I mean, there are a lot of exhibitions in the timeline that already carry a certain historical weight that's been definitively established.
So I remember that feeling of having my perspective fixed on that period of time. Of course, you might ask back, “What's so different about this timeline?”

But we must think about the fact that this timeline, as Shin mentioned fortunately, doesn't have the materiality of a printed publication. So there's always the possibility of revision and supplementation.
Therefore, it has value as a product of research, but it should not be, and I think it will not be a dominant and immutable guide for subsequent researchers.

But I think if you're a researcher interested in the history of art, you should know our timeline didn't really force a particular research topic. Even if our methodology on that subject is not very revealing, you'll be able to look at the relationships of various complex events, especially the temporal relationships in a more closely organized way and that's the appeal of our timeline. None of us really attempted to actually describe the connections between events.
We're hoping that there will be a rather active intellectual exploration and tracking on the part of the reader, and I think that will make this timeline more functional. As those who have looked at the timeline will realize, it's impossible to show the origins of so many events that happened in the 1980s in a timeline.

So I think that exploring the traces of the historical triggers that kind of research, is needed in the future. I mean, there's a certain spirit of each era. Rather than getting stuck in that historical primacy, I think that revisiting the original concerns the different principal agents in that era had might allow for alternative research that's a bit more autonomous, which was something we couldn't reach before, even though we had timelines.

Question 3. Exploration of Research Topics and Utilization of Timelines

Tiffany Yeon Chae: Thank you. I think that research using this timeline can be derived and diversified in many ways, not just in art history research, but also in conjunction with contemporary art criticism.
So, if someone were to do a meta-study, that is, a study that is linked to or derived from the timeline I wonder if you could answer what you can imagine might happen.
Can you give us a new example of researching Korean art using the art history timeline in the “MMCA Research Lab”?

Kim Yisoon: Actually, the timeline is a skeleton. It's just like she said. It's the skeleton. But I don't think it's a skeleton like a completely solid spine. But I think that basically, in research, the timeline is the basic source for us to look at how one event happened in time with another event, and we must do research in the future with that basic source. When I talked about the 1970s, I said I wrote the timeline with research in mind that goes beyond examining the 1970s with the keyword of “Korean modernism.” I expect it to be used as a basis for researchers to add their own perspectives.

If I were to do a thematic study of the 1970s... The 1970s was a period when the art population was increasing. Did the art population only consist of artists? Where does the power that moves the art world come from? I could look into that. I think the institution played a very big role in that.
As mentioned earlier, along with the work that the MMCA has been doing to contextualize art history through special exhibitions, I think another very important thing was the private commercial galleries. Commercial galleries mainly aimed at buying and selling artworks, but they did a lot of the groundwork for that. The commercial galleries published magazines and had professional critics as editors-in-chief, and they were constantly doing artist studies.

In fact, art history was built on the basis of artist research, and when we look at the exhibitions that were organized in the 1970s at places like Hyundai Gallery, the artists were Lee Jungseop, Park Sookeun, Chun Kyungja, and Chang Ucchin. When I think about it now, I realize that galleries played a very important role in shaping art history.
We perceive these artists as “national painters” and I thought that the foundation of that perception was created by the galleries. I don't know if that perception is correct or incorrect, or if there are any errors, but I thought that such issues provide a very important basis for reading the period. I realized that if we look at what was driving the art world, we can tell a rich story.

Lim Shan: I remember saying that based on the first and last record of an art practice in the timeline, there must have been some contextual elements that filled in the gaps that weren't recorded in the timeline, and it would be an interesting research topic to look for them. I hope this doesn't cause everyone to write a paper about this.

Another thing is...Nowadays, art history research is expanding to the micro level. For example, there are exhibit spaces that had created the momentum of artistic creation in a certain era.
There are such spaces in each era. I wish there was a study that could look back at the history and performance of that space, because there was not only a record of exhibitions, but there was definitely a cultural and artistic hegemony, an atmosphere of self-reflective discussion, a process of reflection among artists, and an awakening such as the international exchange mentioned earlier.
I thought it would be quite good to summarize the efforts of the art space alone in that regard.

If you look at the 1980s as a period of mass media and the formation of popular culture, there are many people, who study design nowadays, who study the design of government offices, products made by conglomerates, and the design of refrigerators, fans, and washing machines.
Unlike the mainstream discourse that tries to give creative meaning to such things, I was looking at various materials from the 1980s from small notes to very painstakingly written calligraphy, and I found a lot of printed materials such as all kinds of posters, leaflets, and books related to on-site art, exhibitions, rallies, gatherings, and so on.
Of course, they weren't made with the intention to design something, but research on the traces of media culture that these materials had is practically absent. So I thought that collecting and analyzing them would be a great research topic.

Shin Chunghoon: “Find More.” What I thought of when I saw that was... When I was studying art in the 1970s, I would look at the newspaper. If there was an article about monochrome, there would be a movie on the left side, like a movie at Theater Scala. I'd think, “What's the relationship between these two?” What does a monochromatic painting have to do with a movie featuring Shin Seong-il?
In a way, it's kind of surrealist. It's like two things that shouldn't be together are shown together. I thought how interesting it would be to have a “Find More” that gives that kind of insight.

Another thought I had was that MMCA produces a timeline to organize, explain, and show materials about Korean art, but I think one of the ways that this discussion of Korean art can be relevant to society is to look at how society views artists and art.
So I thought it would be very interesting to know how artists are represented and discussed in novels, literature, or movies of the time. If that happens, then writing about art will not come from the field of art, but from the field of literature or film, and we can draw the changing ideas of art in each era.

Question 4. What is the Expansion Direction of the Korean Art Timelines?

Tiffany Yeon Chae: Thank you. I think Shin's answer also connects to the fourth question I was going to ask. The question is this.
The “MMCA Research Lab” is currently limited to 1945-1999, but we will continue to expand the scope of research on the timeline of art history. It could be a period, a medium, a genre, or a translation into another language. There will be a lot of aspects. What should be expanded in the future and what must be considered then?

Kwon Heangga: If something must be added in the future, I think it should be the modern times. Because I'm a modern-era researcher, I think it's very unfortunate that the modern era is missing from the timeline right now.
I think the way forward is to build up the capacity of the modern era. The researchers here said they'll create a research center, and that's how you build capacity.
So I think we should definitely add the modern era to the timeline. Then, of course, I think we need to add the year 2000 and beyond. It makes me wonder. Aren't we doing this at a crossroads, before we get to the full AI era? How long will this be useful? These thoughts come to mind. Maybe this timeline has a shorter lifespan than we think. So we need to think about how this timeline should be built to continue to work in the AI era.

Another thing that's missing from the timeline is local history. Local art history is almost fatally underrepresented. We had a lot of discussions when we were writing the timeline. We realized that because of the capacity of the medium, we couldn't put everything in. But if we put local history in, there was so much that we didn't really know. So the matter of where to start and where to end was very vague.

So if you look at the timeline now, we put the basics in the beginning, like art associations that were created in each region, but there's a lot of information that's missing. I think that once the art history of each region is built then it can be connected to the current timeline. I think that this timeline is something that the researchers of the museums in the region and those who are studying local history should continue to work on and link together, and at the same time, even if local history is being studied, this isn't a matter of local history asking to be added into the main timeline.

We have to evaluate how it's significant in the context of art history as a whole. That's why I think local art history research should be accumulated in conjunction with the main art history.

Kang Min-gi: I'll be brief too. I mentioned that I've been dealing with a lot of art groups. I think archive-based research should be differentiated from other research. We need to think about how to use the archival materials that the MMCA has already established as a basis for research, not only to use for research, but also to use as a source.

So I think it'd be great to have both research and primary sources at the same time. It's always really time-consuming to be on the hunt for sources, but I think it would be very helpful for researchers to have easy access to materials that are already set up and organized.

Kim Yisoon: The thing is that when I was writing my thesis on the history of modern and contemporary art in Korea, I mainly focused on sculpture, but when I actually made the timeline, I barely included the sculpture part. I still have this idea that the art history timeline was written around painting, especially Western painting, so I thought that I should include the neglected genres.

Another area that we barely touched on is architecture, crafts, and design. I don't think it would've been easy for us to cover all of them anyway. It would've been too vast, and I think the researchers' ability is lacking as well. But if people look at the timeline within the field of so-called fine art, within the connection between these fields, then people would be able to view history in a three-dimensional way.
Another thing is that I think the activities of the critics are almost missing in this timeline. At least the critics that are considered important...
Of course, what's considered important is also very subjective. But at least critics who are thought to have done a lot of critical activities at the time, and when was the publishing date of the books that are considered important...
For example, Lee Yil worked as a critic all his life with the discourse “reduction and expansion.” So when did he publish a book about that concept? If these kinds of things could be put into the timeline, it would be a very important source for reading the times.

Kwon Heangga: Now that you mentioned it, I'm thinking that we should add the activities of art historians as well. I think that we should accumulate this in the future too. In the past, the curator of the exhibition was not clear.
So it was difficult to put the curator's name in the timeline. Nowadays, exhibitions tend to be presented as if they are the work of the curator. For very important exhibits, the curator is included. So I think that the diversity of producers in the art world that make up art should be included.

Question 5. Archives Research and Needs

Tiffany Yeon Chae: Yes, that's right. When we were doing our research last year and thinking about how we were going to write the timeline, there were definitely areas that we thought we should include, like critique and publication, but in the end, we decided that we should do more research about them.
Now, I have two questions left. They're about the archives that were mentioned earlier. The “MMCA Research Lab” contains a number of images that utilize the MMCA archives. As we were working on the timeline, there was a lot of talk in our internal meetings about the need to further study the MMCA archives. So how do we study the archives in this regard?

Cho Soojin: To answer this question, I had to look at the “MMCA Research Lab” as a whole, and there were a couple of things that came to mind, so I'll include those as well. First of all, when I observed several things from a user's perspective, I realized that everything in there absolutely needs to be vetted for accuracy and constantly revised and updated.
If you click on an entry, a significant part of the terminology explanation relies on the explanation of the Korea Arts Management Service. A huge amount of work has been supervised by expert researchers for a long time, but it's questionable whether the terminology content is being corrected or updated when it should be, so I find it a little disappointing. But I think it is absolutely necessary that everything in this timeline is reviewed, corrected, and supplemented in the future, and I hope that separate support will be provided and a systematic process will be established for this.

Also, several researchers had a lot of interesting things to say about the MMCA Research Lab's “Find More” section.
When I clicked the “Find More” section, I thought, “This is a device to keep people in this maze so that they can't get out of it.” Because usually, when you go in and you type in a search term that you're interested in, or you click on a group or an author that you're interested in, you automatically look at the related information that's next to it, and you try to get a sense of what you want to know from that related information. But if you click “Find More,” you forget about it and you go somewhere else. In that way, you can just go around in circles and hang out in that system all day long.
I think what people want is half to have a kind of guidance that gives them a sense of direction and flow to navigate the numerous fragments in this vast history, and half to go somewhere else and be stimulated.
To keep those two things in balance, when you enter a search word, for example, relevant information should show up in the “Timelines,” “Essays & Articles,” “Images,” and “Art Terms.”

In some cases, it shows you a considerate number of related terms and groups and exhibitions that match up quite suitably. But in other cases, it's very incomplete. For example, I typed in “experimental art,” and in the “Related” section, I got “Welded Sculpture” and in the image, “Feminism” was displayed. I clicked “Welded Sculpture” and saw just the term “experimental art” in the description.
But welded sculpture itself doesn't really have anything to do with experimental art.
So someone has to constantly check the way the website is mechanically putting terms together. The other thing is the relationship between terms.

For example, after “abstract,” there are conceptual terms like “Minjung Art,” “Eastern painting,” and “experimental art,” and then there are terms like an artist's name or a group's name so there are about three related terms in the timeline system. But it'd be difficult to explain a huge term like “abstract art” with three related terms. I don't know if we can perfectly change the portion of that or the relationship between the terms, but I think we need a service that provides some kind of connection that we can continue to accomplish within the current system. Another is that if you search for “Kwon Jinkyu,” the artist's information comes up.

But if you search at MMCA Art Research Center Collection, there's actually “Kwon Jinkyu's Collection.” I think we need a device that can constantly switch back and forth between these two.
When you type in Kwon Jinkyu, what comes up under the name is not just a description made by the Korea Arts Management Service, but also “Kwon Jinkyu's Collection, MMCA Art Research Center Collection,” so even if there is no link to it, relevant information can constantly be given. Then users won't have to keep going back and forth.
This is also the answer to the question I had received. The MMCA Art Research Center has a huge collection of art materials, but the way I have to search for them is by entering specific information that I already know, then I keep going to submenu after submenu.

There are so many good sources in the “MMCA Research Lab,” and there's so much stuff floating around that's very visualized.
So I hope there is a quick way to get people who want to be more specialized to know that when you click on an entry, related sources are right there, so they can be led to that information.

Question 6. Comments

Tiffany Yeon Chae: Thank you. We'll definitely take that into consideration for future development. The search part is still something that we're struggling with, so thank you. We don't have much time left. This is the last question.
Finally, I would like to ask you to say a few words about the future direction in which MMCA Research Lab and Korean art research can have synergy.

Kang Min-gi: There are so many things in Korean modern and contemporary art history that have not been explored. There are so many artist studies that have not been done.
And there are so many meaningful art groups that we have looked at while working on this timeline. So I think this timeline is the most basic way to start looking for more meaningful things in Korean art history.There are so many topics for research, so I hope that many researchers will be interested in the modern and contemporary period of Korea.

Kwon Heangga: We say that the timeline will change in the future, but we have to build the structure for it to actually change. This must be regularized for the timeline to be updated on a regular basis. We need to put in place an institutional framework so we can keep reviewing it.
For this timeline to come out, a lot of researchers participated in the multilingual glossary. I hope the timeline is reviewed by genre especially by art historians with specific knowledge about design and printmaking and I hope a system is established so a plan is made every year for reviewing and accumulating the timeline.

Cho Soojin: I will give an answer that connects question number five and six. Within the timeline, most of the art history descriptions are movement history-oriented because they are based on existing research. In particular, the part that I was in charge of had a lot of group activities, so there were mainly writers who belonged to groups. Another thing is that artists who have clarity are the ones who are mainly recorded.

For example, in the case of artist Park Kiloung, he has left a very big footprint as he received the Presidential Award at the 18th National Art Exhibition in 1969, and he was mentioned twice in our timeline.
However, when I try to search for this artist, no result comes up in the “Art Terms.” So he wasn't mentioned all that much. But if you think about it, 80 of his works were donated to the MMCA after his death. A retrospective exhibition for him was held in 2007.
When you think about this, it's not that it's bad that he hasn't been mentioned on the current platform. It could be a structural problem that made us not be able to cover him, such as ambiguous forms, or because he was an artist who didn't work in groups but only individually.

So it is necessary to continue to discover artists who are considered important in MMCA's data, collections, and exhibition records. Researchers from the museum's archives and Collection and Archive Department could work closely with those who worked on the timeline. Then I think we'll be able to hold more exhibitions and do more research.
It would be good for the museum to carefully review the collection history of other department and constantly check the information updated on the MMCA Research Lab. I think it would be great for all of them to interact with each other.

Kim Yisoon: I think the synergy is in the utilization. So far, it's been the researchers who have created the timeline, but now, the users are the ones who will be actively using it. But the problem is, and this is something that we keep pointing out, is errors. If there are errors, don't think, “I keep finding multiple errors.” So this timeline is useless. I'm going to close it. Don't respond like that. If you find an error, give us feedback right away so that we can fix it.
This is what I ask of you. Ultimately, what I hoped for with this timeline was that it would be used as a basis to go beyond the traditional art history, which is the monolithic art history narrative of Art Informel, Experimental art, Monochromatic painting, Minjung Art, contemporary art, and so on.
This is a fact-oriented timeline, but without such factual information, narrating art history is almost impossible. So I would like to ask you to look at the information from your own perspective and utilize it for the research of more diverse and interesting art history narratives.

Lim Shan: As I was working on this timeline, I became in awe of all the work that the people in our art world had done, recorded, and researched. With that admiration, this is what I felt. I began to wish there was a space for those who study art history or art theory to be more active, specific, and patient in researching smaller topics.

I think that the kind of research support that can be done at the MMCA is different from the kind of research support that can be done at a university or a society. I would like to see that recognized, if not awakened, by the MMCA. When people who work and organize various things gather together and dynamically exchange their thoughts, then propose something to the art world, there is actually very little structure for support.
The Korean art world keeps talking about new reflections after the pandemic, but in actuality, it's only talk. Hardly anyone has proposed to do anything. I don't think it will be good for this situation to continue for long. So I hope that the MMCA Research Lab will take on this role with a sense of responsibility.

Shin Chunghoon: I also think this timeline is one of the many projects of the MMCA Research Lab. If you actually go to the website, you'll see “Essays” and “Features.” There are several categories.
I think the timeline is the most basic framework, but fleshing it out is something that is done by other projects within this platform.Through that, I would like it to be a space where any study can come onto this platform and start with the basics and then have other discussions that can spark different imaginations of how this can unfold and move forward.

Q&A

Tiffany Yeon Chae: I appreciate all of your answers. We'll definitely take that into consideration for our future work.
If any of you have any questions for the people here on stage or if you'd like to make a comment, please raise your hand.

Audience 1: Thank you so much for the extensive research that you've done. Based on what you were saying earlier on the panel, I got the sense that the way the website is organized is kind of flat.
But if you look at how commercial websites are organized, they're very three-dimensional and stylish. So I thought if you could look into that, then you would be able to find the know-how to connect more material.

Audience 2: First of all, I want to thank you as a reader and researcher for all your hard work. One of the things I've always been a little disappointed about when I look at these studies is the connection between museums and schools.
I want to know how these resources can be connected to be used in the classrooms and how students can learn from them. I'd love to hear how we can get to that kind of learning where autonomous reading, which you emphasized a lot, is possible.

Kwon Heangga: Earlier this week, I had the students in my Korean Modern and Contemporary Art History class and my graduate students try this out. I asked, “Isn't it hard?” but they browsed through it really well. But then they said that it'll be hard for people who know nothing about art and fun for people who know a little bit about art.
But for people who want to learn at a deeper level, they said it's a little lacking. I think a timeline is just that. I think it's something that I would show students when they're starting out as a researcher and say, “Here's a timeline. Take this and look at what's in each era.” Then it's up to you to make connections from there.

Shin Chunghoon: I think I'll also ask my students to talk about what's lacking in this timeline and why it's lacking. I think that might open up a different discussion from the perspective that's in this timeline, and I think that might help us better organize this timeline in the future.

Cho Soojin: I think what I struggled with the most when I was writing the 1960s essay was that since I was writing a very short essay to introduce the era, I wondered if I could express my own thoughts or opinions in it. So when you read my essay, you might say to me, “You briefly summarized what everyone knows so well.”

But I hope you understand that the content of the essay is the description of art history so far. As I said at the beginning, as the students piece through countless pieces of information, when they're asked, “Setting the existing essay aside, what do you think?” If you can critique this essay, what would you like to say? and they can express really creative opinions, then I think the timeline has done its job.

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Study Group 1 │ On Writing Timelines of Korean Art: The Roundtable

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