WASHINGTON, DC.- The Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art has named Sunwoo Hwang its inaugural Korea Foundation Curator of Korean Art and Culture. Following an international search, Hwang was selected for this role in April 2024. The endowed position is made possible by a matching gift from the Korea Foundation to deepen and make accessible people’s understanding of Korean art and culture; the museum will match the amount to establish a fund for the curatorship. This gift from the Korea Foundation builds upon its long history of support for the museum.

As the museum begins its second century, Hwang will provide the sustained leadership necessary to grow its Korean program and collection and serve as a national and international leader in the study and presentation of Korean art and culture.

Since its founding as the Freer Gallery of Art, the National Museum of Asian Art was one of the first in the United States to display Korean art. As the Korea Foundation Curator of Korean Art and Culture, Hwang will steward the museum’s growing collection of Korean objects—a number of which are the finest examples of their kind outside of Korea. Hwang will reinstall the Korean permanent gallery in the Freer and expand and diversify the museum’s holdings through gifts and purchases. In addition, she will shape a major Korean art loan exhibition already scheduled for 2025–2026 from the National Museum of Korea featuring masterworks recently donated by the family of former Samsung Corp. chairman Lee Kun-hee. Hwang will also create an ambitious and engaging scholarly program and drive innovative cultural programming at the museum.

After serving as the Korea Foundation Global Challenger intern at the National Museum of Asian Art in 2018, Hwang returned to begin a five-year curatorial training fellowship at the museum, which concluded in 2023. During that time she contributed to an array of projects including two exhibitions: “Sacred Dedication: A Korean Buddhist Masterpiece” (2019) and “Once Upon a Roof: Vanished Korean Architecture” (2022). She also translated the publication Research Report on a Seated Wooden Avalokiteshvara (duk 953) (2019) and is currently co-editing with Keith Wilson, the museum’s curator of ancient Chinese art, a research volume titled Korean Buddhist Images and Dedication Practice featuring papers presented at a National Museum of Asian Art symposium in 2020. Hwang received a Master of Arts in humanities from the University of Chicago in 2009 and is currently a doctoral candidate at Dongguk University in Seoul, South Korea, specializing in Buddhist wall paintings in Shanxi province, China.

“Colleagues and I are pleased that Sunwoo is joining our curatorial team,” said Chase F. Robinson, the museum’s director. “Her perspective and contributions will be essential as we build on our ongoing initiative to raise the profile of Korean art and culture in our galleries, programs and public spaces.”

“I thank the Korea Foundation for their generous support that has made this opportunity possible,” Hwang said. “It is an exciting moment to begin this new position as the museum starts its next 100 years with a clear commitment to Korean art and culture.”