The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Installs New Presentation for the Arts of Korea Gallery

Installation of two dozen historical and contemporary objects features prestigious loans from the National Museum of Korea

HOUSTON—May 16, 2024—The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, has installed a significant new presentation for its Arts of Korea Gallery. The new installation focuses on the dynamic, five-century epoch of the Joseon Dynasty, through objects from that era as well as interpretations by three contemporary artists. The installation features objects from the growing MFAH collections of Korean art, along with prestigious loans from the National Museum of Korea.

Established in 2007, the Museum’s Arts of Korea Gallery is the first gallery dedicated to Korean art in the American South. The Museum’s holdings and displays of Korean art have expanded significantly through important gifts, major acquisitions, and prestigious loans from the National Museum of Korea. The artworks shown span several centuries of artistic production from Korea, and include scholars’ accessories, ritual ceramics, ink paintings, and decorative works from everyday life, as well as works by three contemporary artists: Geejo Lee, Ran Hwang, and Lee Ufan.

“We are very pleased to once again partner with the National Museum of Korea to present some of their most treasured objects to our audiences in Houston,” commented Gary Tinterow, Director and Margaret Alkek Williams Chair of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. “These objects will illuminate for visitors the beauty and artistry of Korean culture across generations.”

“With this renovation grant and new loans from NMK, the MFAH’s Arts of Korea Gallery has been completely transformed, embodying the austere beauty and artistic restraint of Korea’s Joseon period with the cutting-edge, sleek aesthetics of contemporary Korea,” said Bradley Bailey, the Ting Tsung and Wei Fong Chao Curator of Asian Art. “Seemingly suspended inside new, completely transparent cases, striking white ceramics, elegantly shaped jars, and finely carved dining tables are accompanied by a recent acquisition—a monumental masterwork by contemporary Korean artist Ran Hwang. Made of over 100,000 buttons hammered into panels, it represents the palace gates of the great Joseon palaces of Seoul, showing the enduring beauty and importance of Korean art of this period.”

Bailey added, “And, as the gallery’s centerpiece, a massive, Jar with Dragon design, executed in rich cobalt blue, showing two lively dragons swirl amidst clouds, which was from the collection of former Samsung chairman Lee Kun-Hee. Its curving, voluptuous shape and comparatively tiny base, seems to defy gravity. Instead of going all the way to Korea, visitors to the MFAH can now enjoy important masterpieces from Korea’s impressive past, and jaw-dropping contemporary works from Korea’s exciting present.”

During the Joseon Dynasty, scholars governed alongside kings and held significant influence. They were literati; obligated to engage in public service, adhere to Confucian principles through scholarly study; and contribute to the moral fabric of society.

Many of the historical works on view in the new Korean gallery reflect how the scholar’s life was closely tied to writing. They include writing implements and accessories such as inkstone, brush, paper, porcelain, a wooden brush holder and porcelain water droppers. These scholar essentials showcased playful shapes, including animals and mountains adorned with cobalt blue. Despite their small scale, their variety of shapes and artistic expression reflects the taste of Joeson scholars, and highlights the fusion of practicality and creativity that characterized these Korean ceramics.

Also featured in the gallery is a 10-panel, 19th-century folding screen, Seven Jeweled Mountain, depicting a panorama, typical of its time, of the legendary mountain range that was renowned for its distinctive topography and said to contain seven treasures. A selection of porcelain ritual bowls and vessels reflects the rites of passage—coming-of-age, wedding, funeral, and ancestor worship—of the Confucian values upheld by the scholar class.

Two contemporary works interpret iconic Joseon-era subjects. Geejo Lee’s porcelain Moon Jar (2018) is a contemporary version of one of the most distinctive and iconic forms of Korean ceramics, its name inspired by its evocative shape. Ran Hwang’s First Wind (2015) depicts sweeping views of the Five Grand Palaces of Seoul, built during the Joseon Dynasty, using more than 40,000 buttons, pins, and beads that she has affixed across a wooden panel. The artist has also rendered the historic Great South Gate of the ancient walled city, the nation’s most prized national treasure. It is rendered as white beams and rubble, alluding to the 2008 arsonist’s attack that nearly destroyed it. Floating white ash alludes to the role of destruction in rebirth in Buddhist practice, a recurring element in Hwang’s work.

Organization and Funding
The Arts of Korea Gallery is generously supported by the National Museum of Korea.

About the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston
Spanning 14 acres in the heart of Houston’s Museum District, the Fayez S. Sarofim Campus of the MFAH comprises the Audrey Jones Beck Building, the Caroline Wiess Law Building, the Nancy and Rich Kinder Building, and the Lillie and Hugh Roy Cullen Sculpture Garden. Nearby, two house museums—Bayou Bend Collection and Gardens, and Rienzi—present collections of American and European decorative arts. The MFAH is also home to the Glassell School of Art, with its Core Residency Program and Junior and Studio schools; and the International Center for the Arts of the Americas (ICAA), a leading research institute for 20th-century Latin American and Latino art.

Media Contact
Melanie Fahey, Senior Publicist
mfahey@mfah.org | 713.800.5346