Encountering North Korea Through its Art December 4, 2008

Encountering North Korea Through its Art

with
Jane Portal
Matsutaro Shoriki Chair of the Art of Asia, Oceania and Africa, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

Thursday, December 4, 2008
6:00 PM-6:30 PM * Registration and Reception
6:30 PM-8:00 PM * Presentation and Q&A

The Korea Society
950 Third Avenue @ 57th Street, 8th Floor
(Building entrance on SW corner of Third Avenue and 57th Street)

$10 for members and students, $15 for nonmembers
(Walk-in registration will incur an additional charge of $5.)

For more information or to register for the program, contact Jinyoung Kim at (212) 759-7525, ext. 316, or jinyoung.ny@koreasociety.org.

We might think that we know about North Korea - it has been so much in the news recently, presenting a nuclear threat to the region. But in fact we know very little about the country. In the 19th century, the undivided country was called the 'hermit kingdom'. Since 1953, the south has become accessible and widely known, while the north has remained a hermit, with very few tourists being allowed to travel there to find out what it is really like. Perhaps one form of evidence which would help us understand the north better is through its art. Jane Portal was very privileged to be able to travel to Pyongyang in 2001 and 2002 as a result of the establishment of diplomatic relations between the UK and the DPRK. At that time she started to collect a variety of contemporary works for the British Museum.

This lecture is in conjunction with the gallery exhibit North Korean Images at Utopia’s Edge, on view at The Korea Society Gallery through December 12, 2008.

About the Speaker

Jane Portal holds the Matsutaro Shoriki Chair of the Art of Asia, Oceania and Africa at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Until August 2008, she was curator of the Chinese and Korean Collections at the British Museum. She curated the Korea Foundation Gallery at the British Museum, which opened in 2000, and visited North Korea in 2001 and 2002, where she began collecting contemporary North Korean art for the British Museum. She is the author of Korea: Art and Archaeology (British Museum Press, 2000), Art Under Control in North Korea (Reaktion Books, 2005), and the co-editor of North Korean Culture and Society with Beth McKillop (British Museum Research Paper No.151, 2004). Portal has coordinated the British Museum's China Strategy and curated the First Emperor loan exhibition from China.

Official Website: http://www.koreasociety.org/arts/gallery/encountering_north_korea_through_its_art.html