London galleries
The British Museum has a reasonably large room devoted to Korean works, including a replica of a traditional Korean scholar’s room and some interesting North Korean propaganda posters.
To quote from the Arts of Korea website,
The British Museum’s Korean collection is known as the best collection in Europe. It features objects from pre-history to the present day including stone sculptures, paintings, printed books, screens and fold art as well as ceramics, celadon pieces from the Koryo dynasty, lacquer ware, gold and bronze. Contemporary art pieces from both North and South Korea have recently been added, summing up the entire collection to be about 446 pieces of Korean objects on display. These objects explore the themes of geography, language, religion and everyday life in order to illuminate the fascinating culture of Korea. The famous Korean collection is displayed in the newly opened Korea Foundation Gallery on the 3rd floor of the Edward VII room, which was established with support from the Korea Foundation. Spanning 120 square meters, the gallery also features a reconstruction of a traditional Korean sarangbang. The sarangbang consists of two rooms and one wooden floor, and it displays a nobleman’s writing implements and stationary. Through the sarangbang exhibition, visitors can feel the beauty of the Korean traditional architecture and the ambience of a traditional Korean environment.
Victoria and Albert Museum has a narrow room devoted to Korean stuff. Again, quoting Arts of Korea,
Victoria and Albert Museum is recognized as one of the British royal museums. It has large collections of decorative arts and crafts, including a respectable Korean collection. The Korean collection started with the growing interest in Korean art in the early years of the 20th century, when curator C.H. Wylde visited Korea in 1912 to purchase a wide range of Korean artifacts and ceramics. Today there are more than 656 pieces of Korean art, including metalwork, textiles, ceramics, and lacquer ware. The Korean collection is displayed in the Samsung Gallery of Korean Art, which was recently expanded to 40 square meters.
Some images from the V&A collection are here.
Books on art and archaeology
See the category Book Reviews: Art. And hopefully sometime soon a publisher will have the vision to take on Soyang Park’s book on Minjung art.
Web links:
- Young-hae Chang Heavy Industries contains text-based video art. It’s quite fun. Don’t play the second video on the list if your boss is likely to be watching.
- The website of hanji artist Ham Sup contains images of his work and some articles and reviews.
- A useful introductory article on Minjung art is available at the Korean Studies portal; as is a slideshow of images from an exhibition of North Korean art.
- WolganMisool has a brief introduction to 11 20th Century Korean artists.
- Arts of Korea is a useful web resource; and Universes in Universe has hundreds of Korean art links.
- Korean themed clip-art is available here
- ArtSeoul - for Art News and things to buy
Where to buy
AntiqueAlive has Korean antiques and artwork for sale, together with some useful essays and articles.
