In 1973, Kay E. Black, a housewife living in Denver, joined a group of local art enthusiasts on a tour of museums in Seoul. One of the stops was the Emille Museum, founded by Zo Za-yong, a pioneer of Korea’s 20th-century folk art movement, who brought to light the currently sensational image of a tiger and magpie. Black could not have known that this single visit would change the course of her life.

She was immediately captivated by Zo’s introduction to brightly colored Joseon-era (1392-1910) folding screens, which depicted books and assorted scholarly objects. Upon returning home, Black enrolled in the Asian Studies program at the University of Denver. Over the next four and a half decades, she devoted herself to the study of “chaekgeori” (also spelled chaekkori), a still-life genre within the broad tradition of “minhwa,” or Korean folk painting.

“Chaekkori Painting: A Korean Jigsaw Puzzle,” published in 2020 just days before Black’s passing, stands as an admirable testament to her passion and perseverance. The book is an exhaustive study of a genre that had long been overlooked by academics despite its growing popularity. Black examined more than 150 works, traveling extensively around Korea, Japan, Europe and the United States to study and photograph them firsthand.

What makes her achievement particularly noteworthy is that, throughout her long scholarly journey, she worked closely with two eminent Korean studies scholars: Edward E. Wagner and Gari Ledyard. The late Professor Wagner of Harvard University, a peerless authority on Joseon-era genealogy, assisted her in tracing the family lineages of some important painters. Professor Ledyard of Columbia University provided indispensable bibliographical guidance.

Black and several other Americans were remembered at a seminar marking the 100th anniversary of Zo Za-yong’s birth, held on Jan. 2 at the Insa Art Center in Seoul. In her presentation, titled “Zo Za-yong and His American Disciples,” Kim Soo-jin, a research professor at Sungkyunkwan University’s Academy of East Asian Studies, observed, “Among the Americans who collected, documented and researched Korean art, there were quite a few who regarded Mr. Zo as their mentor.”

In the mid-20th century, Korean society had yet to fully reclaim its sense of national identity and cultural pride. Zo, a US-educated and sought-after architect, devoted himself to promoting Korean folk art and culture. By collecting, researching and exhibiting folk paintings and craft objects, often dismissed as outdated or insignificant, he worked tirelessly to rediscover the roots of Korean culture and to assert its value amid a prevailing sense of Western inferiority.

Ironically, at the early stage of his efforts, Zo drew greater attention from foreign residents and diplomatic communities than from the Korean public. Peace Corps volunteers were also drawn to his museum. Professor Kim noted, “From 1967 to 1981, some 1,700 Peace Corps members served in Korea as English teachers or assistants in rural development. Many of these young men and women loved the Emille Museum and eagerly attended Zo’s lectures.”

Carl and Jennifer Strom were among them. Arriving in Korea in 1970 fresh out of college, they remained after completing their two-year terms as English teachers and worked at the Emille Museum, translating publications into English and studying Korean folk culture. Both later earned master’s degrees in Asian studies at the University of Hawaii.

From 1974 to 1975, Carl Strom traveled throughout the countryside, visiting Buddhist temples to photograph old paintings adorning shrine walls, including images of mountain gods, Daoist immortals, tigers and dragons. After carefully archiving the material, the couple donated some 3,200 slides to the Getty Research Institute in Los Angeles, where they are accessible to scholars. They now live in Southern California, and Jennifer is writing books on Korean shamanism.

Another figure deeply influenced by Zo was Lea R. Sneider, the wife of Richard Sneider, who served as US ambassador to Korea from 1974 to 1978. Inspired by Zo, she began collecting Korean folk paintings and objects associated with shamanic and funerary traditions. After returning to the United States, she built a career as an art collector and dealer, operating Lea Sneider Asian Art in New York City for over three decades, specializing primarily in Korean and Japanese antiques.

In 1983, Sneider presented her collection in an exhibition titled “Auspicious Spirits: Korean Folk Paintings and Related Objects” at the Asia Society, collaborating with Robert Moes, then curator of Oriental art at the Brooklyn Museum.

In the exhibition catalog, Sneider wrote: “It was indeed a most auspicious spirit that gave me and my family the opportunity to live for some years in Korea and to come to know, in a dynamic period of progress and change, the vitality and warmth of a proud people. With a long history of wars and occupations behind them, Koreans are once again free to revel in their national identity and strong sense of pride.”

Following her death in 2020, Sneider’s children donated a significant portion of her collection to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Around 100 works — including paintings, ceramics, textiles, furniture and funerary objects dating from the fifth century to the present — are currently on view in the exhibition “Colorful Korea: The Lea R. Sneider Collection” at the museum’s Korean art gallery. The exhibition runs through Feb. 15.

Lee Kyong-hee

Lee Kyong-hee is a former editor-in-chief of The Korea Herald. The views expressed here are the writer's own. -- Ed.


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