Kyung An at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York. — ©2023 The New York Times Company
WHEN Woo Hyun-soo arrived in the United States in 1996, she was, in her words, “fresh off the boat” from South Korea. And she noticed something right away.
“Korean art was nowhere to be found” in American museums, even encyclopaedic ones, said Woo, now the deputy director for collections and exhibitions at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. “I was very puzzled by that.”
What a difference 27 years makes: This fall, there are at least five exhibitions of Korean art at major museums across the country.
The art they feature varies from an early 12th-century stoneware ewer to works made recently, like Lee Youngsil’s lacquer on wood Yeongchuksan Gamnodo (Nectar Ritual Painting) (2022).
The confluence of shows now represents the museum world’s recognition that it must continue to expand its view of what kinds of art merit exhibition space. “The variety of these shows is really good to see,” said Kim Hyon-jeong Han, the senior curator of Asian art at the Denver Art Museum.
Two shows already on view are “The Shape of Time: Korean Art After 1989” at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, of which Woo was a co-curator, and “Only the Young: Experimental Art in Korea, 1960s-1970s” at New York’s Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum.
Other shows include the San Diego Museum of Art’s “Korea in Color: A Legacy of Auspicious Images,” ; “Lineages: Korean Art at the Met”, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art; and “Perfectly Imperfect: Korean Buncheong Ceramics”, on display at the Denver Art Museum from Dec 3.
Many of the organisers of the shows are Korean-born or Korean American curators – all of them women – who have been gearing up for this moment for a long time.
“All these brilliant women are scattered around and all doing great work,” said Korean American collector Miyoung Lee, a trustee of the Whitney Museum of American Art who is based in New York.
The Korean influence is also felt more subtly in museum leadership positions.
“It’s so exciting that there’s so much interest and activity in these fields,” said Kim Min-jung, who was appointed director of the St. Louis Art Museum in 2021.
At the time, the museum touted her as the first female director of the institution in its 142 years, but she is also the first Korean-born director of a major US art museum. (Kim has spent her whole career in the United States and is a US citizen.)
Han is a co-curator of the Denver ceramics show, which looks at the buncheong stoneware tradition that flourished in the 15th and 16th centuries and still influences makers today. Among the featured pieces is “Barrel-Shaped Bottle with Peony Motif”, made in the 1400s during the Joseon dynasty.
“Perfectly Imperfect” was organised with the National Museum of Korea; other of the fall’s shows also get support from Korean institutions.
Han, born and raised in Seoul, noted that “Korean galleries were often the last to be added” for museums with dedicated spaces for Asian art, usually only after galleries were established for Chinese and Japanese work. “Now, Korea is in a leading role,” she added.
Woo, of Philadelphia, said that the specificity of the exhibitions represented a “maturing” on the part of both audiences and museums.
“Now, the museum audience is savvy enough to see and absorb the different aspects of Korean art,” she said. “Previously, you’d have just a single masterpiece show that spanned the ages.”
Woo’s show, “The Shape of Time”, features the work of 28 artists, including a new site-specific commission by Meekyoung Shin, “Eastern Deities Descended” (2023), a sculpture made from soap.
The show uses 1989 as its launching point, Woo said, because that year marked an opening up of Korean culture after the 1988 Summer Olympics in Seoul. The year also saw the South Korean government relax its rules on citizens travelling outside of the country.
She said that since that time, artists have been reflecting on Korea’s tumultuous 20th century, from its annexation by Japan in 1910 to the division between North Korea and South Korea, and the Korean War.
“We all share that collective trauma,” Woo said.
Kyung An, an associate curator of Asian art at the Guggenheim, said her show, “Only the Young”, tries to shed light on a movement from the 1960s and 1970s that may be less familiar to viewers than pop, conceptualism and minimalism.
“There were multiple forms of art happening,” said An, a co-curator of the show with Kang Soo-jung of the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea. “It opens up an opportunity to tell a more diverse and plural story than we’ve seen before.”
The exhibition includes some 80 works by various practitioners of what has become known as Korean Experimental Art (known as silheom misul in Korea), including Ha Chong-hyun, Kim Kulim, Lee Kun-yong and Sung Neung Kyung. One of the most eye-catching pieces is Jung Kangja’s “Kiss Me” (1967/2001), a mouth-like mixed media sculpture framed by pink lips.
The Met’s show casts its gaze internally, looking at how the museum has collected and shown Korean art throughout its 153-year history.
“The Korean presence at the Met started in the 1880s,” said Eleanor Soo-ah Hyun, associate curator of Korean art at the museum. “The first objects were musical instruments. In 1892, we got a ceramic piece, which is not surprising, since that was in vogue at the time.”
The Met established its first permanent gallery of Korean art in 1998.
“Lineages” will largely feature ceramics and paintings, including Baik Nam-soon’s “Paradise” (1936), a painted, eight-panel folding screen.
“It shows our collecting history,” Hyun said of the line-up, but it also points to the future. “We’re not as strong in Korean modern and contemporary work, and we hope to develop that.”
As for the confluence of multiple Korean art shows in the same season, several of them were delayed by the pandemic, and coincidence may play a part in the clustering of shows this fall.
But the organisers see a larger trend in the culture, too.
“I do wonder if there’s some sort of energy that we’re all channelling,” said Hyun of the Met, who is Korean American. “It’s like when Hollywood has three asteroid movies at the same time.”
An of the Guggenheim, who was born in Korea and grew up largely in England, said her show has been in the works for nearly six years.
She added that Korean culture has been exploding everywhere, from the Oscar-winning film Parasite to the hit Netflix show Squid Game and the worldwide popularity of K-pop music.
To that list may be added the art fair Frieze Seoul, which had its sophomore outing in September. — ©2023 The New York Times Company
