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This Zoom event will take place on December 9, 8:00 am (New York Time) / 2:00 pm (Oslo Time) / 10:00 pm (Seoul Time)

Please register: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/_QrKUWtCS2OlQgkkaobXAQ

Abstract

Established in 1924 by renowned Japanese art critic Yanagi Muneyoshi (1889–1961), the Korean Folk Art Museum (K. Chosŏn Minjok Misulgwan, J. Chōsen Minzoku Bijutsukan) was the first privately developed museum during the Japanese colonial period in Korea (1910–1945). The focus of this talk is the museum’s location—Kyŏngbok Palace, the royal center of the Chosǒn dynasty that was transformed into a museum park under Japanese rule. How was it possible for Yanagi and his peers to launch a private museum in Kyŏngbok Palace? Although Yanagi envisioned the Korean Folk Art Museum to be an “intimate” and “warm” space apart from politics, its origin and location in Kyŏngbok Palace were inextricably tied to the Japanese colonial government and its cultural policy. By sharing the same site with the Japanese Government-General Building and the Government-General Museum, the Korean Folk Art Museum embodied the inherent tensions of its location at the heart of Japanese colonial power.

About the Speaker

Seung Yeon Sang is a lecturer at the Korea National University of Arts. She specializes in historical and contemporary ceramics in Korea and Japan, with a research focus on the history of Korea–Japan relations. After receiving her PhD from Boston University, she worked at the Harvard Art Museums as the Henderson Curatorial Fellow in East Asian Art from 2016 to 2018. She has been the recipient of fellowships from the Korea Foundation, the Japan Foundation, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Asian Art, and the Sainsbury Institute for the Study of Japanese Arts and Cultures.

About the Moderator

Sol Jung is an independent scholar and curator based in Norway. She was the inaugural Shirley Z. Johnson Assistant Curator of Japanese Art at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Asian Art from 2021 to 2026, where she oversaw the museum’s collection of premodern to contemporary Japanese ceramics, lacquerware, metalwork, and tea-related objects. Jung specializes in Japanese and Korean art history with a focus on how transnational maritime trade impacted the visual cultures of Korea and Japan during the premodern period. Jung received her B.A. with distinction in History of Art at the University of Pennsylvania, and her M.A. in Art and Archaeology from Princeton University. Her research on Korean tea bowls, called kōrai chawan in Japan, during the sixteenth century, has been supported by the Metropolitan Center for Far Eastern Art Studies, the Kyujanggak International Center for Korean Studies. Recent projects include an essay on a set of four idealized portraits of virtuous women from the late Chosŏn dynasty, and an exhibition on Japanese maki-e lacquerware opening in November at the National Museum of Asian Art. 

Chosŏn History Society