The 10 Kings of Hell

In partnership with the National Museum of Korea, the Cleveland Museum of Art presents Ten Kings of Hell: The Afterlife in Medieval Korea. The exhibition traces the soul’s journey in the afterlife as conceived in Korea through the lens of Buddhist theology, as expressed through the material culture of the Goryeo dynasty (918–1392). Presenting an exceptional array of important international loans, as well as recent acquisitions by the CMA, the exhibition is organized into three interrelated sections, each elucidating a key theme relating to the Buddhist conceptualization of death, karmic judgment, and salvation. 

At the exhibition’s dramatic center is the historic reunification of a dispersed set of 10 hanging scrolls, most likely dating to the 1300s, depicting the 10 Kings of Hell, which are also called “the former Packard set.” Named after its first modern-period collector, Harry G. C. Packard (1914–1991), a renowned dealer and collector of Japanese and Korean art, the former Packard set has long been dispersed among various collections and institutions. The painting of the First King, now in the Harvard Art Museums, was gifted in 1974 by the dealer Nathan Vadim Hammer (1917–1980), a specialist in Asian art. The paintings of the Second, Sixth, and Seventh Kings, now in the Honolulu Museum of Art, are all from Robert P. Griffing Jr. (1914–1979), a former director of the museum. The Second and Seventh Kings arrived through donation, and the Sixth King was purchased in 1967. The painting of the Ninth King, now in the Denver Art Museum, came from the collection of John B. Bunker (1926–2005) and Emma C. Bunker (1930–2021), who donated it in 1982. 

Following Packard’s death in 1991, the works still in his possession—the Fourth, Fifth, Eighth, and Tenth Kings—were sold at a Christie’s auction in 1992. All four were purchased by Joseph P. Carroll, a prominent New York–based Korean art dealer. In 2010, he sold the Fifth, Eighth, and Tenth Kings to the National Museum of Korea, and in 2019, he sold the Fourth King to the CMA through a combination purchase and gift. Finally, during preparations for the exhibition, the long-untraced Third King was rediscovered. It was found in the Kohōan Inoue Collection at the Museum of Modern Art, Gunma, Japan, where it has been held since 1974. 

Any important gathering, such as this historic reunion of all 10 Kings, requires a carefully considered seating arrangement. Determining that arrangement depends on a close examination of each king’s posture and gaze. In the Nara National Museum set, also on display in the exhibition, for example, the odd-numbered kings face left and the even-numbered kings face right. Their placement can therefore be arranged in alternating directions, so that each odd-numbered King appears paired in conversation with an even-numbered King. In this display, each pair of kings is fully absorbed within their own pictorial drama, as if conversing with one another about their verdicts.

The Packard set, however, requires a different seating arrangement, as all the kings turn their heads only slightly toward their right shoulders, with the exception of the Fourth and Ninth Kings, who are depicted frontally and gaze directly outward. For this reason, each King in the Packard set is arranged in numerical sequence around the CMA’s centrally placed Standing Kṣitigarbha, with the first five Kings installed to the right and the remaining five to the left. In this arrangement, the First and Tenth Kings visually orient themselves toward Standing Kṣitigarbha, creating a compositional framework that draws the viewer’s attention to the central savior figure and reinforces his role as the Lord of the 10 Kings.

At the heart of this curatorial vision is an effort to reunite the paintings not merely as a series of scrolls, but as a carefully orchestrated passage through repentance, judgment, and salvation. The reunion of the 10 Kings of Hell at the CMA presents a remarkably rare opportunity to reimagine the narrative and spatial logic through which Goryeo-period Buddhist devotees may have engaged with these paintings in their original ritual setting—where the imagery of the 10 Kings staged a ritualized rehearsal of postmortem judgment.

A select group of contemporary artworks is also included to underscore the enduring resonance of humanity’s existential concerns. Positioned at the forefront of the exhibition narrative, Anicka Yi’s Bending Willow Branches (2025) makes a compelling opening statement: Death is not an end point but part of a continuum of life, persisting, mutating, and transforming across time. Presented within the hellscapes section, Park Chan-kyong’s Belated Bosal (2019) encourages viewers to confront human-induced environmental catastrophes and to reflect on their far-reaching karmic consequences. Finally, in the concluding section that brings the journey to the afterlife to its end, Tidal (2026), a video by Cleveland-based artist Qian Li, professor of graphic design at Cleveland State University, explores both the fragility and the overwhelming power of nature through a meditative visual and soundscape.