For greater than seven many years, the household behind electronics large Samsung amassed certainly one of Asia’s largest personal art collections. Now, with hundreds of its priceless works in public palms following the loss of life of the conglomerate’s chairman, the collection is being put to new use — as a part of South Korea’s “K-culture” soft-power drive.
More than 200 of the 23,000 objects gifted to the country in 2021 by the late Lee Kun-hee’s property — regarded as a part of a deal to settle an inheritance tax invoice of over 12 trillion received ($8.2 billion) — are occurring show on the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art in Washington, DC this month.
Spanning 1,500 years, the objects chosen by the Smithsonian’s curators for “Korean Treasures: Collected, Cherished, Shared” give guests a glimpse of the roots and evolution of Korea’s fashionable identification, in addition to the motivations of the notoriously personal Lee household.
The objects vary from uncommon Buddhist sculptures and sacred texts to vintage furnishings and Twentieth-century work by pioneering artists like Lee Ungno and Kim Whanki, who curators say redefined Korean portray in a modernizing world.
The Lee Kun-hee collection, which was began by its namesake’s father, Samsung founder Lee Byung-chul, is unprecedented in its scope and scale. Almost all of the 23,000 donated objects went to the National Museum of Korea and the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, whose curators collaborated with the Smithsonian for this exhibition. After the present was introduced, South Korea’s authorities unveiled plans for a complete new museum in Seoul to show the collection, which it hopes will “strengthen Korea’s brand identity as a cultural powerhouse.”
The Washington, DC exhibition contains a number of sections devoted to Korea’s final royal kingdom, the Joseon dynasty, which lasted from 1392 to 1910. Curators showcase the tastes and morals of the scholarly elite via court docket art and ceremonial objects, providing a take a look at the beliefs, aesthetics and patronage methods that formed Korean tradition. The present additionally considers Buddhism and its legacy on the Korean peninsula, in addition to fashionable artists’ makes an attempt to grapple with the Korean War and monumental adjustments taking place within the nation and globally.
Some objects from the Washington, DC exhibition will even be displayed in Chicago and London subsequent 12 months amid rising world fascination with all issues Korean, from K-beauty to Ok-pop.
“It is fantastic that Korea is making this global contribution to popular culture the way it is, but you know, Korean culture didn’t start 10 or 15 years ago, right?” mentioned Chase F. Robinson, director of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art, over a video name. “There are deep, deep reservoirs or veins of, especially, Korean visual culture. This is an opportunity to see that in play.”
The exhibition, Robinson added, will “play an important role in filling out that understanding, and (in) seeing some of those pre-modern traditions that feed into these millennia of creative dynamics.”
The theme is especially related given the rising measurement, affect and cultural energy of Asian American communities within the United States, he mentioned.
Most of the objects are being exhibited outdoors of Korea for the primary time, organizers mentioned.
“That there is this heritage that is so multi-dimensional and so rich — to bring it all together and show the significance — I think is what is notable, remarkable,” mentioned Carol Huh, the museum’s affiliate curator of latest Asian art, over a video name.
Huh’s curiosity and specialty is the work of Twentieth- and Twenty first-century artists who addressed modernization and a quickly altering political panorama. It is a interval during which Korea, having had little or no contact with the broader world for hundreds of years, all of the sudden discovered itself being influenced by forces and traits far past its speedy neighbors.
Within 100 years, the nation went from being an imperial dynasty to a Japanese colony, to 2 unbiased states after the peninsula was divided right into a Russian-controlled north and US-administered south after World War II. South Korea is now a liberal democracy, whereas the North is a totalitarian state run by Kim Jong Un.
“They were very much at the core of this complicated history of trying to understand what it is to be an artist in Korea,” she mentioned.
Huh mentioned the Lees’ bequest fills a spot within the historical past of latest Korean art with work by practically 300 Twentieth-century artists included. It was, she added, a interval of figuring out and asserting distinctly Korean cultural varieties.
Among the Smithsonian’s choice is figure by artists like Kim Whanki, a well known determine within the monochrome Dansaekhwa motion, whose members — having lived via Korea’s liberation from Japan, a civil battle and the navy dictatorship — used abstraction to keep away from express which means of their photographs, partly out of concern of strict authorities censorship. Also featured is Lee Ungno and Park Saengkwang, a part of the antithetical Minjung art (or “the people’s” art) motion, which sought to advance democracy and social justice within the Seventies and Nineteen Eighties.
The Lee household “presciently sought out modern paintings at a time when only a few paid attention to them,” reads the exhibition catalog.
Samsung founder Lee Byung-chul was partly motivated by the need to repatriate art from Korean historical past. Many of the artifacts he acquired had, over the centuries, been despatched overseas, misplaced or actively erased by the colonial Japanese authorities, which had even sought to outlaw the Korean language.
“The cultural heritage of our nation should no longer be scattered or lost abroad,” he wrote in his autobiography.
The Lees have made varied presents to museums throughout South Korea in latest many years. And even after its huge 2021 donation, the household retains a sizeable personal collection, a few of which is on show on the Samsung-run Leeum Museum of Art in Seoul, the place the household continues its accumulating legacy.
Lee Kun-hee’s art acquisitions weren’t with out controversy: In 2007, he was accused by Kim Yong-chul, a former Samsung lawyer, of shopping for costly artworks utilizing firm slush funds. That accusation, which Lee denied, set off an investigation into the previous chairman that noticed him convicted of tax evasion in 2008 (although prosecutors by no means introduced bribery expenses referring to the alleged slush funds).
Like among the artists in its collection, the Lee household additionally appeared to grapple with what it means to be Korean in a globalized period, and the collection offers glimpses into what the Lees, and their advisors, noticed as a part of Korean identification — and what they sought to challenge to the remainder of the world.
Lee Kun-hee is quoted within the exhibition catalog as saying: “When Korean identity permeates our daily lives, we will gain cultural competitiveness on the world stage.”
His father, in the meantime, was recognized to put in writing about how artworks excited him when he wanted a religious elevate, or would calm him down when he was excited or upset, mentioned J. Keith Wilson, the Smithsonian’s curator of historic Chinese art.
“Clearly, he had a very personal connection with Korean art of the past and was able to communicate with it in what seems to be like a spiritual way,” Wilson added.
“Korean Treasures: Collected, Cherished, Shared” is displaying on the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art in Washington, DC via February 1, 2026.