The early Joseon period, a time of extraordinary artistic achievements in Korea, will be explored in a loan exhibition opening at The Metropolitan Museum of Art in March 2009. Showcasing approximately 45 spectacular works—painting, ceramics, metalwork, and lacquer—Art of the Korean Renaissance, 1400-1600 will illustrate the lively and nuanced story of the formidable cultural renaissance that flourished during these two centuries.
The exhibition will be on view from March 17 to June 21, 2009.
Drawn from major museums and collections in Korea, Japan, and the United States—including the National Museum of Korea; Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art; Kyushu National Museum of Japan; Museum of Oriental Ceramics, Osaka; Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Cleveland Museum of Art; Mary and Jackson Burke Foundation; and the Florence and Herbert Irving Collection—the exhibition will also include the Metropolitan's recently acquired mid-16th-century hanging scroll, Gathering of Scholars. The presentation will launch a series of focused exhibitions on important periods in Korean art history, to be held at the Museum over the next 10 to 15 years.
The Neo-Confucian royal court and elite scholar-officials in the 14th century were the primary patrons of the arts. With the establishment of the Joseon Dynasty in 1392, secular art and culture thrived: Korean and East Asian classical traditions were emphasized, and innovative art forms were celebrated. At the same time, Buddhism—which had been the state religion on the Korean peninsula for over 1,000 years, though actively suppressed publicly—remained an enduring part of the Korean culture during the early Joseon period.
Organized into six thematic sections, the exhibition will display many rarely seen masterpieces. Among them are: an exquisite eight-panel folding screen titled Eight Views of the Xiao and Xiang Rivers (Kyushu National Museum of Japan), which exemplifies the Korean transformation of an earlier Chinese pictorial tradition; a number of superlative and elegant examples of early Joseon white porcelain, including a striking flask-shaped bottle (Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art); a glorious Buddhist painting (dated to 1570) illustrating a popular narrative and featuring inscriptions written in the Korean alphabet, which was invented in 1443; and a winsome painting titled Mother Dog and Puppies (National Museum of Korea) by Yi Am (1507-66), a descendent of the Great King Sejong (r. 1418–50) and an artist renowned for his unique paintings of royal-breed puppies.
A majestic painting of a falcon (Museum of Fine Arts, Boston)—formerly attributed to a Chinese painter and recently reattributed to Yi Am—will be introduced for the first time as a Korean painting.
The exhibition is organized by Soyoung Lee, Assistant Curator in the Metropolitan Museum's Department of Asian Art.
It will be accompanied by a fully illustrated catalogue written by Soyoung Lee with JaHyun Kim Haboush (Columbia University), Sunpyo Hong (Ewha Woman's University), and Chin-Sung Chang (Seoul National University). The first English-language publication on this subject, the book will be an important addition to a field that still has a paucity of scholarly yet accessible publications in English. It will be published by The Metropolitan Museum of Art and distributed by Yale University Press. -- www.metmuseum.org
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