Restored by experts at Leeum Museum of Art, 19th-century folding screen to return to Peabody Essex Museum following Leeum show
A folding screen depicting a banquet hosted by a provincial governor in 1826 during the Joseon era (1392-1910) will be on display for a month at the Leeum Museum of Art, which restored the painting that belongs to the Peabody Essex Museum in Massachusetts.
The 16-month restoration effort began in November 2023 when Leeum became the first private museum in Korea to take part in the state-run Overseas Korean Cultural Heritage Foundation’s annual project to restore Korean cultural objects held overseas.
“Welcoming Banquet of the Governor of Pyeongan,” an eight-panel screen, illustrates a banquet hosted in 1826 by the governor of Pyeongan Province — roughly coinciding with North and South Pyongyan provinces in northwestern North Korea today — to honor the two top candidates who had aced the grueling state examinations to become public officials.
The screen was briefly on show at the National Museum of Korea in 1994, but “the painting back then had not been as fully restored as it is now,” an OKCHF official said Monday during a preopening tour of the show, which opens Tuesday and runs through April 6.
“We now have identified the correct title for the work, and all eight panels are in the right sequence,” the official said of the 16-month restoration that included sifting through vast volumes of historical data to make informed retouches to the centuries-old folding screen.
The Peabody Essex Museum acquired the painting in 1927, a purchase that left no paper trail that could shed light on how it was made or who it was bought from, according to the US museum.
“It took decades for us to finally get this restoration help,” said Kim Ji-yeon, curator of Korean art at Peabody. She noted that locating a highly skilled pool of experts on Korean folding screens had been next to impossible until the museum came to learn of the joint OKCHF-Leeum restoration plans.
Nam Yumi, senior conservator at Leeum, said her team dedicated much of the restoration effort to “filling up ten thousand holes” left by insects attracted to the rice flour on the screen.
“Rice flour had been applied all over the surface of the paper made with bamboo. Rice flour renders paint colors more vivid,” Nam said, adding that her team made sure paint pigments would not easily decay over time.
The frames that hold the eight panels together were re-created, Nam added, referring to extensive research required to reflect their historicity. The panels had been separately framed with glass picture frames, and the researchers at Leeum had to determine the order of the panels, consulting another folding screen depicting the same area, among other materials.
Accompanying the folding screen on exhibition at Leeum is a “hwarot” — a traditional wedding robe worn by women during the Joseon era. Peabody, one of 20 museums abroad holding a ceremonial garment of this kind, had also asked for the hwarot to be restored.
The Peabody Essex Museum, touting one of the world’s largest Korean collections totaling some 1,800 pieces, said a Japanese antiques dealer donated the hwarot in 1927. How it was taken out of Korea remains unknown.
“It took 13 months to fully repair the hwarot,” another OKCHF official said of the garment embroidered with symbolic motifs — lotus flowers, peonies, phoenixes and butterflies — to express hopes for a prosperous marriage and a life of happiness.
The hwarot is believed to have originally been only for royalty until it was allowed to be worn by nonroyals in the late 19th century. “Hanji,” or mulberry paper, was found to be used to connect the outer and inner fabrics of the hwarot’s sleeves, according to experts from a Dankook University team that led the hwarot restoration.
The garment restoration cost OKCHF, the state-run foundation, some 300 million won ($206,000). The folding screen restoration was entirely funded by the Samsung Foundation of Culture, which operates Leeum.
Leeum’s restoration expertise came into the spotlight in 2015, when it helped a German museum restore a Korean celadon piece. In February 2023, restoration work began on two hanging scrolls by Korean independence fighter Ahn Jung-geun. In December of the same year, Leeum was charged with restoring the Joseon folding screen.
After the March-April special exhibition at Leeum, the Peabody Essex Museum will showcase the two restored Korean objects in May.
“So far we have supported 58 projects in total to ensure Korean cultural heritage overseas is not only preserved, but displayed to give a global audience the chance to appreciate them,” said Kim Jung-hee, chair of the OKCHF.
siyoungchoi@heraldcorp.com
