Nationwide Museum of Asian Artwork Names Sunwoo Huang as Korean Artwork Curator


The Smithsonian‘s Nationwide Museum of Asian Artwork (NMAA) in Washington, D.C., has named Sunwoo Hwang as its inaugural Korea Basis Curator of Korean Artwork and Tradition. Her place can be funded by way of an identical present from the Korea Basis and an quantity from the NMAA.

“Sunwoo’s going to do a terrific job,” NMAA director Chase Robinson advised ARTnews. “It’s a beautiful testimony to the standard of labor that she’s executed and can do, and to what she represents by the use of sort of embodying that Korean-American collaboration.”

Beginning this fall, Hwang will start to supervise curatorial and cultural programming initiatives, together with stewarding the museum’s rising assortment of Korean objects and reinstalling the everlasting gallery devoted to the nation within the Freer Gallery in 2027.

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The present Korean assortment on the NMAA contains practically 800 objects, with a concentrate on ceramics, particularly celadon works and work from the Goryeo dynasty. “We’re at present working in talks with donors about receiving presents, and hopefully with future purchases,” Hwang advised ARTnews, talking from her house within the South Korean metropolis of Cheongju. “We might develop our Korean assortment past ceramics into totally different mediums, introduce a special subject to our Korean gallery.”.

Hwang can even facilitate a serious mortgage exhibition with the Nationwide Museum of Korea that options 200 objects from the household assortment of former Samsung chairman Lee Kun-hee. The present is scheduled to happen in November 2025.

“We haven’t had a big mortgage present like this in 30 years,” Hwang stated. “I feel it should give our viewers a uncommon probability to view Korean artwork throughout time, by way of a special vary of objects.” Robinson known as the present “the only most necessary factor to occur in america and North America about Korean artwork for an extended, very long time.”

Hwang, who first started on the NMAA as an intern in 2018, beforehand did a five-year curatorial fellowship on the museum. She has executed reveals for the establishment akin to “Sacred Dedication: A Korean Buddhist Masterpiece” (2019) and “As soon as Upon a Roof: Vanished Korean Structure” (2022).

In 2009, Hwang obtained her masters diploma from the College of Chicago. She is at present a doctoral candidate at Dongguk College in Seoul, South Korea, specializing in Buddhist wall work in China’s Shanxi province.

Robinson stated the institution of the Korean artwork and tradition place can even enable the NMAA start to consider the way to assist practice the following technology of Korean artwork curators, in addition to take into consideration East Asia as a matrix between Chinese language artwork, Japanese artwork and Korean artwork. “We will now take into consideration East Asia, not simply as a set of sort of discrete traditions, however as a cultural matrix of, of various types, totally different influences, non secular influences, inventive influences,” he stated. “Now that we’ve acquired this curator, Korea then locks into place, and we are able to take into consideration that matrix. So it opens up all kinds of alternatives for us that I feel we couldn’t notice earlier than.”

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