한국의 뮤지엄 정책에 대한 비판적 소고 -「박물관 및 미술관 진흥법」을 중심으로 -

Abstract

Museum policy of Korea has achieved it policy goal to promote museums qualitatively, with a series of enactment, abolishment and revision, since the mid 80’s. However, when asked whether these new museums are fulfilling social responsibilities properly, it is not easy to answer. The reason why museums of Korea are not free from the criticism on their social functionality is related to the lank of robust legal framework. The representative case is「Museum and Art Museum Support Act」enacted in 1991. The act was legislated to replace「Museum Act」established 1984 and has been modified through 23 times of revisions for the past 14 years but still not free from criticism. The biggest issue lies in the hierarchy between museum and art museum. The point is museum policy, implemented by the administration of Korea is facing many challenges due to unreasonable legal framework and this in turn affects negatively on organizational structure of the government as well as universities in nurturing professionals in the field. To improve social functions and responsibilities of museums, it is essential to build relevant Museum law, as it is the very basis for entire system. The paper is to diagnose the issues of「Museum and Art Museum Support Act」in context of system and organizational structure and to offer solution to the issues. The key solution are as follow. - The conflict between concept and practices causes by the loopholes in the current「Museum and Art Museum Support Act」should end by abolishing the act and establishing a new law with the title of「Museum Act」. In the process, provisions to promote art museum, the entity emerging as the center of contemporary art and culture, should be specifically stated. - The newly enacted law should apply mandatory registration of public museums to stop reckless mushrooming of public museum since the threshold for registration was lowered. In the meantime, to strengthen social function and responsibility of museum, they should be perceived as an ‘institution’ not ‘facility’. - It seems desirable to adopt separate category for museum professionals by their roles, instead of calling them all curator, to strengthen expertise and specialty in each category. To this end, it is necessary to segment typers of curators by their function. For specifics of the segmentation, refer to the competency categorization for curator in ‘National Competency Standards’ published in 2014. - <Museum Policy Department> under ‘Culture and Arts Policy Bureau’ of the ministry should be restructured into a comprehensive department to oversee art museum policy, too. Since the structural change is directly linked to content of relevant legal framework, thorough review on「Museum and Art Museum Support Act」should be the prerequisite.