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 the Chelsea district in New York City, the Ilmin Museum of Art in Seoul and the American University Museum in Washington, DC. Through his professional endeavors, 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 galleries including 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.
In addition to actively creating and exhibiting his own art, 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, North Korea to conduct his research which has been based on first-hand, on-site experience in the North Korean art community. He visited many art studios including the Mansudae, Sam Ji Yon, and the White Tiger studios. Muhn also visited the Choson National Museum of Art and the National Art Exhibition in 2012 as well as interviewed numerous artists and art historians. Based on his research, he has given lectures on North Korean chosonhwa at numerous academic venues and cultural centers in the United States, including Georgetown, John Hopkins, Columbia, Harvard, Michigan, and Ohio State Universities, the Watermill Center for Robert Wilson in Long Island and the Korea Society in New York City.
As a curator, he was invited to facilitate Contemporary North Korean Art: The Evolution of Socialist Realism at the American University Museum in 2016, and North Korean Art: Paradoxical Realism at the 12th Gwangju Biennale in 2018.