This study aims to gain critical insights into how institutionalized school art education could be considered as a process of social and cultural transformation or reproduction. This research examines and analyses critically the discourses and practices produced by the institutionalized education. This research began with the question: how have Korean art educators perceived the school art education institutionalized in the Korean sociocultural context since modern times, and what discourses and practices have been produced by the educational context? In order to answer these questions, this research used qualitative methodological approaches such as cultural studies, ethnography and critical discourse analysis. The research data was collected by interviewing eight research participants selected as Korean art educators who have experience in the Korean school art education field. The research data was analyzed by critical insights into the ideological power and cultural hegemony embedded in the institutionalized art education, focusing on the function of cultural reproduction. The research data are categorized with three discourses: (1) capital ideology; (2) unstable teacher identity; and (3) curriculum ideology. These discourses revealed as habitus producing cultural capital, in Bourdieu’s terminology within the institutional practices in Korean school art education. The results of critical discourse analysis implicate that art education approaches establish subjectivities beyond the institutional limits around social equality. According to these results, we can see the requirement of reconsidering the processes of sociocultural discourses being formed within a particular educational context and deconstructing the educational discourses constructed by ideological power and institutional practices embedded in school art education.