"Using Funds Meant for Treasury Return as Employee Incentives" National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art Caught in 16 Cases of Improper Work Handling

Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, Results of Special Audit on National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art

Attendees are viewing the exhibition works at the press preview and briefing session of the 'Lee Kun-hee Collection Special Exhibition: Lee Jung-seop' held at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in Sogyeok-dong, Jongno-gu, Seoul.
[Image source=Yonhap News]

[Asia Economy Reporter Kim Heeyoon] It has been revealed through a special audit by the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism that the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (MMCA) improperly handled its duties, including purchasing artworks in violation of its artwork acquisition regulations.

On the 9th, the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism announced that it confirmed 16 cases of illegal and improper handling of duties during a special audit of the organization management and overall operations of the MMCA, an affiliated institution. The ministry demanded the museum to return funds to the national treasury (rectification), issued warnings and cautions, and notified the museum to prepare reasonable improvement measures.

First, although Article 5 of the Artwork Acquisition Regulations stipulates that the proposers for general purchase acquisitions should be external experts selected by the director and curatorial staff, limited to within 50 people, the museum reduced the internal curatorial proposers to ‘members of the museum’s curatorial research subcommittee’ and ‘curators designated by the director as needed’ when establishing detailed guidelines in 2020.

The number of external experts, originally operated at 50, was drastically reduced to 11 from 2021. Accordingly, proposals for general purchases from external experts decreased from 72 cases in 2020 to 8 cases in 2021 and 34 cases in 2022.

During auction purchases, without clear grounds, auction schedules and information on auctioned artworks were only shared via KakaoTalk and other means with 7 to 8 curatorial staff members, limiting purchase proposals to a small group. This caused a decline in proposals from external experts for general purchases, and auction purchase proposals became monopolized by a few curatorial staff, undermining transparency and diversity in the artwork acquisition process.

Furthermore, although a value appraisal committee should be conducted based on bidders’ reports when purchasing at auctions, among 115 auction purchase proposals, 40 bidder reports were not submitted before proceeding with the auctions, resulting in 16 final successful bids.

Visitors are viewing the exhibits at the 'Nam June Paik Effect' special exhibition held at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Gwacheon, in Makgye-dong, Gwacheon-si, Gyeonggi Province.
[Image source=Yonhap News]

Additionally, from 2020 to 2022, among 279 artworks finally decided to be acquired through general purchase after price consultations by the value appraisal committee and price advisory committee, the purchase prices of 26 artworks were arbitrarily adjusted without reasonable reasons or consistent criteria. Seven pieces, including ‘Dark Land (Universe)’ by Teresita Fernandez, were raised up to 50 million KRW despite being undervalued by the value appraisal committee, while ‘Counter Gap’ by Miyajima Tatsuo was lowered by 10 million KRW despite being overvalued by the committee.

The Artwork Acquisition Deliberation Committee, which makes the final decision on artwork acquisitions, was also operated without clear regulations or objective criteria regarding recusal and avoidance. It was revealed that staff who proposed the purchase of artworks participated in the deliberation of those artworks, and the head of the acquisition department improperly interfered with the price advisory committee, which should have operated independently.

According to Article 24, Paragraph 2 of the Enforcement Decree of the State Property Act and Article 9 of the State Property Management Consignment Contract, the museum and the cultural foundation must settle income and expenditure annually, and if income exceeds expenditure, the surplus must be paid to the national treasury. However, the MMCA Cultural Foundation arbitrarily used 31,966,950 KRW as employee incentives on September 15, 2022, before the fiscal year ended, citing early achievement of annual income targets from the museum shop ‘Art Zone’ and parking lot.

Currently, the cultural foundation follows Article 65 of its internal financial accounting regulations, which stipulates that general competitive bidding is the principle, and limited private contracts may be concluded. However, from 2020 to 2022, 20 out of 21 contracts over 30 million KRW were concluded as private contracts. Four cases, including the ‘MMCA Lee Kun-hee Collection Special Exhibition Lighting Purchase and Installation Service,’ were improperly contracted privately.

Regarding Nam June Paik’s work ‘Dadaikseon,’ it was revealed that due to lack of coordination among related departments, no exhibition plan necessary for displaying and managing the artwork was established, and the piece was not properly managed as part of the collection, resulting in some parts (monitors) being displayed while broken, showing negligence in artwork management.

Director Yoon Beom-mo failed to report the hacking incident of the YouTube channel ‘National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art’ that occurred on August 29 last year to the Ministry headquarters, preventing the ministry from taking measures to prevent similar hacking damages within the department. It was also confirmed that some department heads neglected their duties as institution heads by ignoring inhumane behavior toward employees.

The Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism conducted a special audit on the museum’s institutional operations and major projects from October 24 to November 4, 2022, and confirmed issues in institutional management and collection and management of holdings during this process.

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.