• Korean Association of Arts Management
• /
• no.53
• /
• pp.71-99
• /
• 2020

This study focuses on the case of the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea (hereafter MMCA) that has faced the issue of securing autonomy as an art institution in association with the neoliberal logic of economy as part of globalization. The MMCA was opened with limited operational autonomy due to the government's development-driven national system and bureaucratic perspective. Since being selected as an institution subject to a range of restructuring consequent to the IMF crisis in 1997, the MMCA is being assessed for its operational autonomy since then. This paper examines the socio-cultural background of the implementation of the Korean type of 'Executive Agency' and 'Non-Departmental Public Body'. Furthermore, regardless of the result of either implementation or withdrawal after the projects, this paper explains how these administrative reforms lead the conflicts between stakeholders, which would promote the MMCA's autonomy. As a result, the institutional restructuring process based on the neoliberal perspective might result in the operational dilemma that must simultaneously fulfil the publicness in a different context. Moreover, unlike the original intent to establish a performance-based system based on the principle of competition while minimizing government intervention, this study illuminates that the influence of the nation(or government) as the actual agent of the projects may become permanent. It implies that since the establishment and development project of MMCA has initialized the concept of statism based on legal authority, the operational autonomy of the MMCA which is premised on the reinforcement of expertise and publicness cannot be prioritized over the direction and control of the government.