ABOVE: Hyunsoo Woo, who has just been appointed Curator of Korean Art at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, a new position.

The Philadelphia Museum of Art announced yesterday that it had appointed Hyunsoo Woo as associate curator of Korean Art, a newly-created position made possible by wealthy museum donors. The museum, which has in the past worked closely with Philadelphia Korean-American groups, has a sizeable collection of Korean art. Woo comes from past posts at the Japan Society in New York and the Brooklyn Museum.

As cities become more cosmopolitan and ethnically mixed, more and more of them are going to see such moves: museum board members and donors have long since ceased to be old-money WASPs with a taste for potbellied Regency writing desks and little else. Affluent cultural groups want to see their heritage reflected in public institutions too, and they have the chequebooks to make it happen. While the Philadelphia Museum of Art declined to name the donors who made the appointment possible, so we don’t really know the full story, but in this case, and undoubtedly in cases yet to come, it isn’t hard to connect the dots.

LINK: Philadelphia Inquirer > Art Museum names Korean curator