U.S. museum names S. Korean as curator of Asian art

By Kim Hyun
SEOUL, Jan. 7 (Yonhap) -- Sun Seung-hye, an emerging Asian art scholar newly
appointed as curator at the U.S. Cleveland Museum of Art, said Thursday that she
hopes to help lay a cultural bridge between Korea and Japan, neighbors whose
relations continue to be troubled by historic frictions.
Sun, former curator of the National Museum of Korea in Seoul, takes the role as
associate curator of Japanese and Korean art at the Cleveland museum in July, the
U.S. museum announced in a statement.
"There are few museums in the United States that present both Korean and Japanese
art," she said over the telephone from Tokyo, where she is putting the final
touches on her doctoral thesis at Tokyo University.
"This museum is where both countries are featured, and I'd like to develop
exhibitions and programs that illustrate how different they are, what things they
shared, and still how they fostered their own originality."
Sun's post had remained empty since the museum removed its Asian collection from
public view in 2005 as a result of the renovation and expansion project. With a
three-year $450,000 grant by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, it hired Sun ahead
of the completion of its renovation project set for 2013. The envisioned new
buildings will include Asian galleries with more than 4,000 objects from Japan,
Korea, India, Southeast Asian nations, China and Tibet, the museum said.
"Her appointment signals a new direction for scholarship in the field, one
focused on the cross-cultural exchange between Japan, Korea and China, and
matches her own expertise with a great strength of the collection, Edo-period
Japanese art." Griffith Mann, chief curator at the museum, said.
"Sun understands the strengths of our collections and offers a compelling vision
of how they can be showcased to their best advantage."
Sun, who had spearheaded Japanese art programs at the South Korean national
museum and lived in Japan for six years for her doctoral study on Japanese art,
said that Korea and Japan share the tradition of literati painting, one of the
strengths of Cleveland's collections, but their characteristics are culturally
distinct. Korea's literati paintings were more prudent and pursued philosophical
traits driven by aristocrats, while Japan took more diverse paths with touches of
humor at the hands of samurai and the middle class, she noted.
"In historic aspects, there are thorny issues between Korea and Japan. I hope to
be able to play the role of a bridge in cultural aspects," she said. "Also
Americans are more familiar with Japanese culture, and hopefully my presence at
the museum will help shed light on Korea."
Korea was colonized by Japan for 36 years until Japan's defeat in World War II in
1945, which left a slew of unresolved issues, such as compensation matters on
forced laborers or sex slaves. Disputes on historic textbooks and territorial
claims also remain a thorn.
hkim@yna.co.kr
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