Arko Art Gallery, an exhibition facility included in Korea Arts & Culture Service, opened in May 1979 at the site of Seoul National University. Located in Daehangno, the center of Korean culture and art production, Arko Gallery building was designed by architect Kim Soo-geun and his red brick building became an iconic symbol of Daehangno. The building was designated as Seoul’s Future Heritage in 2013 for its preservation value as history of architecture.

The exhibition hall was rented out for planned exhibitions to support art groups and individual artists at the time when there was a lack of galleries in Korea. As time went by, more public and private galleries were established in the late 1980s. At that time the Arko Art Gallery started to focus on their own planned exhibition spaces. In the late 1990s, it strengthened professionalism as a public gallery, changing a new paradigm of contemporary art as a leading gallery. After 2005, Korea Arts & Culture Service changed to Korea Arts & Culture Committee and then Arko Art Gallery implemented an art director system to enhance its operational responsibilities and expertise.

Arko Art Gallery features a facility producing Korean contemporary art and discourse and offers experiential planned exhibitions and various educational programs to implement convergence between genre and medias. Also, it creates strong international and regional networks and constructs global networks by diverse collaborating programs. It also plays a role in supporting rising artists through separate subsidiary facilities like Insa Art Space as well as an archive, seminar rooms, and a project café to give a venue for active conversation about arts.