Provenance: Journeys of Korean Art

This installation in the Korea Foundation Gallery highlights the captivating stories behind how works of art entered the museum’s collection. Not all arrived as a purchase from art dealers or auction houses—some emerged from on-site research trips that led to unexpected discoveries, while others were welcomed through generous gifts and donations. A Royal Outing, an 1800s Korean folding screen on loan from the Allen Memorial Art Museum in Oberlin, Ohio, for example, left its home in Seoul as a farewell gift from a Korean king to his American English teacher. The Amitabha Triad was an unexpected find in a pawn shop during a curator’s early-1900s research trip. Meanwhile, the Portrait of a Court Official once belonged to a Danish doctor who cherished it as a memento of his time in 1960s Seoul before it entered the museum’s collection. 

These extraordinary objects remind us that transparent provenance, or history of ownership, not only upholds ethical collecting practices but also reveals compelling stories—narratives that illuminate the cultural, social, and political worlds in which these works of art changed hands.