In celebrating the 25th anniversary of the Arts of Korea Gallery, this issue of the Bulletin invites us to reflect on the past while embracing the future. Featuring objects from the Bronze Age to the present, Lineages: Korean Art at The Met illustrates both the continuities and ruptures of style, form, and medium that have defined the dynamic terrain of Korean art. The 47 works included—from lacquer and ceramics to paintings and collage—express Korean tradition, history, and socio-cultural change over more than three centuries of creativity. This volume honors one of the first museum galleries in the United States dedicated to Korean art by offering readers a greater understanding of the nation's aesthetic past and future.

Mount Geumgang, also known as the Diamond Mountains, is perhaps the most famous and emotionally resonant site on the Korean Peninsula, a magnificent range of rocky peaks, waterfalls, and lagoons, dotted with pavilions and temples. Since ancient times, it has inspired cultural pride, spurred spiritual and artistic pilgrimages, and engendered an outpouring of creative expression. Yet since the partition of Korea in 1945 situated it in the North, Mount Geumgang has remained largely inaccessible to visitors, shrouded in legend, loss, and longing. p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 14.0px Verdana} Diamond Mountains: Travel and Nostalgia in Korean Art is the first book in English to explore the pictorial representations of this grand and varied landscape. The special exhibition it accompanies, organized by Soyoung Lee, Curator in the Department of Asian Art, examines the evolution of Diamond Mountains imagery from the golden age of Korean true-view painting in the eighteenth century to the present day. Even today, when a profusion of Instagram photos can make the world’s most obscure sites and geographical oddities seem familiar, the Diamond Mountains portrayed here in album leaves, scrolls, and screens will be a revelation to many.

Bold, sophisticated, engaging, and startlingly modern, Buncheong ceramics emerged as a distinct Korean art form in the 15th and 16th centuries, only to be eclipsed on its native ground for more than 400 years by the overwhelming demand for porcelain. Elements from the Buncheong idiom were later revived in Japan, where its spare yet sensual aesthetic was much admired and where descendants of Korean potters lived and worked. This innovative study features 60 masterpieces from the renowned Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art in Seoul, as well as objects from The Metropolitan Museum of Art, and presents current scholarship on Buncheong's history, manufacture, use, and overall significance. The book illustrates why this historical art form continues to resonate with Korean and Japanese ceramists working today and with contemporary viewers worldwide.

Explore the rich artistic heritage of Korea: a blend of native tradition, foreign infusions, and sophisticated technical skill.

At publication date, a free ebook version of this title will be available through Luminos, University of California Press’s Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more. Rules of the House offers a dynamic revisionist account of the Japanese colonial rule of Korea (1910–1945) by examining the roles of women in the civil courts. Challenging the dominant view that women were victimized by the Japanese family laws and its patriarchal biases, Sungyun Lim argues that Korean women had to struggle equally against Korean patriarchal interests. Moreover, women were not passive victims; instead, they proactively struggled to expand their rights by participating in the Japanese colonial legal system. In turn, the Japanese doctrine of promoting progressive legal rights would prove advantageous to them. Following female plaintiffs and their civil disputes from the precolonial Choson dynasty through colonial times and into postcolonial reforms, this book presents a new and groundbreaking story about Korean women’s legal struggles, revealing their surprising collaborative relationship with the colonial state.

In today's art world many strange, even shocking, things qualify as art. In this book, Cynthia Freeland explains why innovation and controversy are valued in the arts, weaving together philosophy and art theory with many fascinating examples. She discusses blood, beauty, culture, money, museums, sex, and politics, clarifying contemporary and historical accounts of the nature, function, and interpretation of the arts. Freeland also propels us into the future by surveying cutting-edge web sites, along with the latest research on the brain's role in perceiving art. This clear, provocative book engages with the big debates surrounding our responses to art and is an invaluable introduction to anyone interested in thinking about art.

The Irving Collection represents a wide range of styles and techniques from the 13th through the twentieth centuries.

Lady Hyegyong's memoirs, which recount the chilling murder of her husband by his father, form one of the best known and most popular classics of Korean literature. From 1795 until 1805 Lady Hyegyong composed this masterpiece, depicting a court life Shakespearean in its pathos, drama, and grandeur. Presented in its social, cultural, and historical contexts, this first complete English translation opens a door into a world teeming with conflicting passions, political intrigue, and the daily preoccupations of a deeply intelligent and articulate woman. JaHyun Kim Haboush's accurate, fluid translation captures the intimate and expressive voice of this consummate storyteller. Reissued nearly twenty years after its initial publication with a new foreword by Dorothy Ko, The Memoirs of Lady Hyegyong is a unique exploration of Korean selfhood and an extraordinary example of autobiography in the premodern era.

Bridging the fields of conservation, art history, and museum curating, this volume contains the principal papers from an international symposium titled "Historical Painting Techniques, Materials, and Studio Practice" at the University of Leiden in Amsterdam, Netherlands, from June 26 to 29, 1995. The symposium—designed for art historians, conservators, conservation scientists, and museum curators worldwide—was organized by the Department of Art History at the University of Leiden and the Art History Department of the Central Research Laboratory for Objects of Art and Science in Amsterdam. Twenty-five contributors representing museums and conservation institutions throughout the world provide recent research on historical painting techniques, including wall painting and polychrome sculpture. Topics cover the latest art historical research and scientific analyses of original techniques and materials, as well as historical sources, such as medieval treatises and descriptions of painting techniques in historical literature. Chapters include the painting methods of Rembrandt and Vermeer, Dutch 17th-century landscape painting, wall paintings in English churches, Chinese paintings on paper and canvas, and Tibetan thangkas. Color plates and black-and-white photographs illustrate works from the Middle Ages to the 20th century.