‘Korean National Treasures’ exhibit at the Art Institute spans 2,000 years of art. Here are 5 artworks to see

In April 2021, the Lee family of Samsung Electronics fame announced a bequest of its enormous private collection of art to the South Korean government. Just four months after the announcement, Yeonsoo Chee, the associate curator of Korean art at the Art Institute of Chicago, approached the Korean government.

“I was very eager to actually engage with this collection,” she said.

The collection consisted of more than 23,000 works of Korean antiquities, ceramics, furniture, sculpture, paintings, books and myriad other objects — from 6th-century Buddhist figurines to contemporary art. The historic gift came a year after the death of Samsung chairman Lee Kun-hee. The family, facing an inheritance tax of $11 billion, effectively reduced the value of the estate with the record-setting donation.

Specifically, Chee was keen to curate a selection of works and bring them to Chicago.

Five years later, that exhibition — “Korean National Treasures: 2,000 Years of Art” — is now on display at the Art Institute through July 5. Cut down to just 140 objects, the exhibition offers a rare opportunity to see artworks that, except for stops at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art in Washington, D.C., and the British Museum in London, would require a trip to Seoul.

We asked Chee to identify her five favorite pieces and tell us what makes them worth a visit. Here are her picks, ordered as they appear in the exhibit:

“Echo” by Kim Whanki (1973)

This large blue-and-green oil painting greets visitors as they enter the exhibition, located on the ground floor of the Modern Wing. “This painting is absolutely beautiful,” Chee said. “It is also by one of the first abstract painters of Korea. … It’s an oil painting, but then if you look at it closely, it’s almost like an ink wash. [Kim] was trained as an ink painter during his college years, so he’s very familiar with how to manipulate the pigments to create this effect. He never worked on an easel. He would always work flat on tabletops or on the floor. And if you look at these white lines, they’re not painted lines. It is a negative line that he left unpainted. This use of negative space is very common in ink painting. So I think he was very much still in conversation with his training, but manifested in such an unexpected and Western way.” Chee placed “Echo” next to an 18th-century Moon Jar, because Kim is credited with coining the name “moon jar” to describe the distinctly shaped porcelain vessels produced in the late 17th and early 18th centuries. “So there’s this beautiful connection,” she said.

“Scholar’s Accoutrements in a Bookcase” (19th century)

“This is a chaekado,” Chee said, referring to the eight-panel folding screen adorned with a painting that depicts objects on shelves. The genre was developed in the late 18th century but popularized in the 19th century, at the tail end of the Joseon period, Korea’s influential last dynasty that spanned 500 years until 1897. “We see a lot of different objects that are related to a gentleman’s study,” Chee explained. “But in the beginning, it was just stacks of books, expressing this desire for learning in Confucian Joseon society. Joseon kings always portray themselves as scholars first. So this screen was first made for one of the kings who was a very studious one. The king would ask his officials, ‘What do you see behind me?’ They would say, ‘Books.’ And he would say, ‘Yes, even if you don’t have time to study and learn books, you ought to surround yourself with books so that you always have that mindset.’ So that’s when this chaekado first appeared.” Chee surrounded the panel with related objects, also from the Lee trove — brushes, brush cases, a reading desk, seals, ink stones and small ceramic vessels that hold water for calligraphy. “They were collecting in that vein of Confucian scholarly culture,” she said.

“Ten Symbols of Longevity” (19th century)

Attributed to court painters, this 10-panel ink-on-silk landscape depicts the symbols of “living forever” in the Taoist religion: sun, clouds, mountains, water, pine trees, rocks, deer, cranes, turtles and mythical lingzhi mushrooms. “It says 10 symbols, but there are actually 12,” Chee said, noting that you can also spot bamboo and the important peaches of immortality. “The peaches are probably the most important symbol of the Taoist paradise, which is also known as the peach blossom spring,” Chee said. “Because their peach trees bear fruit only every several hundred years, if you have a bite of it you become immortal.” Although this longevity iconography was well known throughout Asia, Chee said that compiling all the symbols into a unified composition is uniquely Korean. This screen would have been brought out for celebratory events such as birthdays to signal a wish for prosperity and long life. “Many of the objects have distinctive dark outlines, so the spatial relationship is flattened out. There’s not much concern for realism, I think because they were not presenting the natural world. This is an ideal world, where everyone could live forever.” The liberal use of expensive mineral pigment supports the idea that this was an object from a royal household, as does the flawless brushwork. “This is one of those so-called masterpieces,” Chee said. “But because it was done by court painters who worked for money, this was never viewed as fine art at the time.”

“Tripitaka Bodhisattvas” (18th century)

In this painting, three bodhisattvas are seated in a row, each representing a different aspect of the world: Heaven is flanked by earth on the right and the underworld on the left. Bodhisattvas are lesser beings, a rank below buddha, who remain on earth to alleviate human suffering. “This triad also appears in Chinese Buddhism or Japanese Buddhism,” Chee said. “Again, having these three in one composition is very Korean.” She explained the painting’s large size and depiction give clues to the date of the work. “During the Goryeo dynasty from the 10th through 14th centuries, Buddhism was the state religion and the major sponsor was the royal family and aristocrats. Goryeo Buddhist paintings were all done on silk, with beautiful mineral pigments,” Chee explained. “With the Joseon dynasty, things have changed. Confucianism has become the major ideological backbone of society. Buddhism was suppressed, and so it became the religion for the masses, the general public. The paintings became big because they had to be seen at larger gatherings, rather than at private devotions where small paintings are only seen by exclusive members. We also have more deities, expressing their desire to cater to the wider hopes from the lay people.”

“Vase with Landscape Motif” (18th century)

At more than a foot tall, this porcelain vase is decorated with cobalt-blue underglaze, the preferred aesthetic for ceramics during the Joseon period. “The previous Goryeo dynasty was green celadon. Now we’re seeing white porcelain only,” Chee explained. “The reason is that it reflects this Confucian value that puts emphasis on austerity and simplicity. So, luxurious green with beautiful decorative motifs didn’t speak to their aesthetics.” Imported from China, the blue pigment was still a luxury, afforded only to royal potters. The Chinese literary scene depicted spoke to the aspirations of the elite scholar class. “They would immediately know that this is from the very famous Chinese literary theme called ‘Eight Views of the Xiao and Xiang Rivers’ — the pavilion on top of the mountain with the flag fluttering,” Chee said. “Very, very likely that [the vessel] was enjoyed by those yangban, the scholar class. Probably have some wine in there, drinking and writing some poems. It was a conversation piece.”