Image Credit: © MFA BOSTON |
Today, South Korea is a cultural superpower—a global trendsetter producing award-winning films like Parasite, riveting dramas like Squid Game, and chart-topping music by K-pop groups such as BTS and BLACKPINK. But behind the country’s meteoric rise to the world stage, a phenomenon known as the Korean Wave, or hallyu, is the story of remarkable resilience and innovation.
Just a century ago, Korea was in search of a new national identity, following its occupation by Japan and the Korean War. Harnessing cutting-edge technology, the country has rapidly transformed its economy and international reputation. At the same time, its creative outputs are deeply rooted in its past, with many contemporary artists, filmmakers, musicians, and fashion designers paying tribute to traditional values and art forms dating back to Korea’s dynastic kingdom days.
Hallyu! The Korean Wave features approximately 250 objects—costumes, props, photographs, videos, pop culture ephemera, and contemporary works—providing an immersive and multisensory journey through a fascinating history, and a celebration of a vibrant creative force that bridges cultural, societal, and linguistic divides and continues to reach new heights today.
First presented at Victoria and Albert Museum, London, the exhibition is currently at Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and will travel to Asian Art Museum, San Francisco.
Three curators—Rosalie Kim, Victoria and Albert Museum; Christina Yu Yu, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; and Yoon-Jee Choi, Asian Art Museum, San Francisco—discuss this captivating exhibition and South Korea's rise as a cultural superpower.
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Hallyu! The Korean Wave
The Curatorial Roundtable
Thursday, May 16, 2024
The Korea Society
350 Madison Avenue, 24th Floor
New York, NY 10017
About the Speakers:
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Rosalie Kim joined the Victoria & Albert Museum in 2012 as the curator of the Korean collection in the Asia Department and led exhibitions including Hallyu! The Korean Wave and Lustrous Surfaces: Lacquer from Asia and Beyond. Her interest lies in Korean craft and design, world lacquer history, and the making of contemporary culture, craft and design in the digital age. Prior to the V&A, she studied philosophy and civil engineering in architecture in Belgium and Italy, before obtaining her MArch and PhD by Design from the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL. Her PhD thesis was nominated for the RIBA President’s Award for Research in 2012. She worked as an architect in Korea and Europe and led architectural design studios at Kingston University, London. |
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Christina Yu Yu is the Matsutaro Shoriki Chair, Art of Asia and leads a team of curators in overseeing the Museum of Fine Arts' collection of more than 100,000 works from Japan, China, Korea, South and Southeast Asia, and the Islamic world. She first joined the Museum in 2018, after serving as the director of the USC Pacific Asia Museum. Christina was born and raised in China, attended Wellesley for her undergraduate studies, completed her Ph.D. at the University of Chicago, and began her curatorial career with an internship at the MFA. She has also previously held positions at LACMA, Chambers Fine Art (a gallery based in New York and Beijing) and the Yokohama Museum of Art in Japan. |
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Yoon-Jee Choi recently joined the Asian Art Museum–Chong-Moon Lee Center for Asian Art & Culture as the Assistant Curator for Korean Art. Before she joined the University of Chicago Ph.D. program in 2018, she studied Korean art history in general at Ewha Womans University and interned for the National Museum of Korea. While she serves as a specialist in Korean art at the current institution, her larger body of research focuses on the art historical exchange among Northeast Asian countries during the early modern era, especially on the 19th-to-early-20th-century cultural interactions and exchanges between Korea and Japan. She is set to complete a Ph.D. examining the industrialization and modernization of the craft industry in Northeast Asia. |
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