BG Muhn is a visual artist and professor of painting in the Department of Art and Art History at Georgetown University. He has achieved substantial and noteworthy professional recognition through solo exhibitions in venues such as Stux Gallery in Chelsea, New York City, the Ilmin Museum of Art in Seoul and the American University Museum in Washington, DC. Through his professional endeavors, Professor Muhn has received numerous awards for his artistic merits including the Maryland State Arts Council’s Individual Artist Award and the Grand Prize in the Bethesda Painting Awards competition. His artwork has been collected in museums and organizations including Trawick Foundation in Bethesda, MD, Seoul City Museum and the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art in South Korea. He has also received acclaim in reviews and interviews in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Art in America and CNN.
His comprehensive artworks can be viewed on his website: bgmuhn.com (Please view the website on a computer rather than a cell phone since mobile version has some limitations.)
In addition to actively creating and exhibiting his art, Professor Muhn has also taken a strong interest in and studied the relatively unknown field of North Korean art. During the past six years, he made nine trips to Pyongyang conducting research based on first-hand, on-site experience in the North Korean art community. He visited the Mansudae Art Studio, the Choson National Museum of Art and a National Art Exhibition as well as interviewed artists and art historians. He has given lectures on North Korean art at numerous academic venues and cultural centers in the United States, South Korea and Japan including Georgetown, Johns Hopkins, Columbia, Harvard, Michigan, and the Ohio State universities, the Watermill Center in Long Island, the Korea Society in New York City and Doshisha University in Kyoto, Japan. As a curator, he was invited to facilitate Contemporary North Korean Art: The Evolution of Socialist Realism at the American University Museum at the Katzen Arts Center in 2016, and North Korean Art: Paradoxical Realism at the 12th Gwangju Biennale in 2018.
His research on North Korean art culminated in books, North Korean Art: The Enigmatic World of Chosonhwa, 2019 and 평양미술: 조선화 너는 누구냐 (Pyongyang Art: Uncovering the Complex Layers of Chosonhwa, 2018 in Korean). His Korean publication on North Korean art was translated into Japanese and published (2021, Seidosha Publishing House) in Tokyo. He also authored the catalog for the exhibition, North Korean Art: Paradoxical Realism for the 2018 Gwangju Biennale,