Gems I Picked Up from the New York Art Scene

In Seoul, art was rarely something I could enjoy. There were too many other interesting places competing for my attention, and honestly, not that many art spaces I truly loved. That said, there are good memories. The cool air inside the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Gwacheon, reached by train up the hillside. The happiness of standing under the sunlight filtering through the tall windows of MMCA Seoul. The satisfying softness of a sofa at Art Sonje Center, where I once lingered too long in front of a new Kim Heecheon work and drifted toward sleep — and the mysterious darkness of that arc-shaped gallery, and more. But on most days, unless I was seeing something I genuinely wanted to see, I'd quickly lose interest and feel a strong pull to move on to the next destination.

And yet I came to New York telling myself I would return to art. (Wait — what exactly is it that I mean when I say "art"?) What became clear to me was in New York, museum visits shifted back from obligation to pleasure. Paradoxically, the pressure to study made skimming through galleries feel refreshing and light — and within that lightness, I started wanting to pick things up, take something home with me. Memberships meant I could wander museums without paying, so I went constantly. Before coming to New York, I thought I would find a way to become a curator. Once I arrived, I realized something more complicated: I'm not sure whether what I love is art itself, or everything surrounding it — the spaces, the stories, the meanings, the people making things before anyone recognizes them, and that particular hope that seeing something early might mean something. Whether the traditional role of curator is really what I want remains a genuine question. Even so, the New York art scene kept surprising me, and alongside the pleasure of looking, it kept showing me things worth learning from. Here are some of those insights, briefly.

A Love for Quiet Museums — and the Membership Structure Behind Them

The calm that settles over you when you're alone in a space with just a few people drifting past. That's why I love museums in the early morning — but in New York, it's genuinely hard to come by. Most people I met here said the hardest thing about living in New York is the sheer number of people and the noise that never stops. But member hours make the empty museum possible.

Before arriving, I decided to get memberships and live inside museums every day— so I joined MoMA, the Guggenheim, and the Whitney, plus a student membership with the American Alliance of Museums (AAM). I ended up going about once or twice a week, not every day as planned, but I came to feel that joining was absolutely the right call, thanks to the member-only benefits each institution offered. On top of a partial tax deduction, the basic perks — free admission, guest tickets, design shop discounts — were genuinely attractive, given collections too vast to see in a single day and shops with endlessly interesting things. But the real jewel of any membership is the member hour or member night: a time when the museum opens only for members, and you can finally stand alone in front of works that are ordinarily too crowded to approach.

What is a museum actually for? What conditions should it meet? Every American institution I visited was working out its own answer. One that I thought got it most right was MCA Chicago. The exhibitions were strong, but what I remember most is that MCA — quite apart from its beautiful building — knew how to open different parts of its space to visitors and to the public. Looking at the floor map, I noticed something listed as a "Quiet Room" and asked at the front desk what it was. The answer: a space available to anyone for rest and reflection, prayer, or breastfeeding. No conditions, no time limit under thirty minutes — just let the counter know if you'll be staying longer. Inside was a simple sink for prayer or nursing, and a qibla pointing toward Mecca. I spent ten minutes there. Upstairs from the first-floor café, past a staircase, was "The Commons" — an area with tables and chairs where anyone could sit and work freely without buying anything. I watched groups of friends and children using it like it was the most natural thing in the world. I thought of all the times I'd had to move to a café just to write something while in a museum — and of how in Korea, the café has become everyone's living room and study room precisely because genuinely free space is so rare. It was a pleasant kind of shock.

Other spaces stayed with me too; the cushioned sofas with backrests placed throughout Dia: Beacon's galleries, the light-filled café terrace at the Brooklyn Museum, the circular sofa in front of an opaque window at the center of one of the second-floor galleries. The New Museum gave its entire fifth floor over to a rest space and lookout with tables and chairs, open to everyone —I sat there for a while and just looked at the view. How convenient, and how good, that a museum can give you a place to rest and return to the work without ever making you leave the building. Not everyone can stand for two hours at high concentration. Rest is part of spatial design. And when a space is genuinely worth coming back to, interest in the art inside tends to rise with it. A museum has to know how to be a public space — the way a library does. A place where you can develop an aesthetic sensibility without spending a lot of money, where people can talk to strangers and learn something. These were thoughts I'd carried from Korea, but they became stronger in America. One more thing worth mentioning: MCA was fully accessible for visitors with disabilities, and offered free admission to caregivers and disabled visitors. That too should be said.

At the Rubell Museum in Miami, I saw Yayoi Kusama's Infinity Mirrored Room: Let's Survive Forever (2017). On top of the museum's $25 admission — outside the scope of my AAM membership — the mirror room cost an additional $10 for five minutes. I paid without hesitating. Spheres suspended mid-air, mirrors reflecting mirrors, a view expanding into infinity. Kusama transformed her concept of the infinite into something you could physically enter and inhabit. Five minutes felt like fifty seconds,  in a artwork that has aged beautifully over time.