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네이버 공유 카카오 공유 트위터 공유 페이스북 공유

Budding International Interest in Korean Art History

On March 16-18, an international conference on Korean art history was held at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) under the theme ?stablishing a Discipline: The Past, Present, and Future of Korean Art History.?The first day featured a panel discussion on those pioneers of Korean art history who helped promote the subject as an independent discipline within the field of art, such as O Se-chang (1864-1953), Ko Yu-seop (1904-1944), Kim Je-won (1909-1990), and Kim Won-yong (1922-1998). Papers presented over the next two days addressed such major issues as early Buddhist art, the history and influence of Korean ceramics, the arts of the Joseon Dynasty, and modern Korean art.
Participants ranged from academics and museum curators with a special interest in Korean art to graduate students and museum-goers, attesting to the fast-growing interest in Korean art history. During the conference, participants were able to look over LACMA? recently opened Korean Gallery, and had the opportunity to complement the conference? academic discussions with inspection of actual Korean art and artifacts. The Korean Gallery exhibition featured a large number of works recently acquired from the collection of Robert W. Moore, including a number of paintings, sculptures, and handicraft items.
The conference was especially meaningful as the first major international conference on Korean art history to be held in the United States, and judging from the keen interest expressed by participants its timing could not have been better. Growing interest in Korean art has actually developed only rather recently compared to the active research that has been conducted into Chinese and Japanese art over the last 50 years in the United States. Given the relative lack of Korean art historians and specialists in the field, conditions until recently have not been favorable for promoting Korean art. However, in recent years a number of Korean galleries have been established in leading museums around the world, and this combined with increased interest among art specialists and ordinary art lovers has led to increased calls for active measures to address this issue.
Though it is hard to say whether the LACMA conference fully addressed the issue of the past, present, and future of Korean art history, it was clearly an important starting point in establishing the subject as a field for international study through continued academic exchanges and presentations both within and outside Korea.
In the days following the conference, several presentations on Korean art history were conducted at the annual meetings of the Association for Asian Studies (AAS) in Chicago and the Association for Korean Studies in Europe (AKSE) in London, which attests to the rising interest in Korean art and the increasing number of specialists in the field. At the AAS meeting, one panel dealt with the funerary practices of the Goryeo Dynasty and the meaning of Goryeo Buddhist painting and burial items. Another panel on the history of Chinese pain ting included a presentation on the influence of the northern Song style on Goryeo Buddhist painting. Meanwhile, the AKSE meeting even drew the participation of several North Korean archeologists.
These experiences lead one to hope that in the future continued efforts will be made to hold academic discussions on the history of Korean art, the apex of Korean culture.
Indeed, no effort should be spared in promoting Korean culture around the world.


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