CLEVELAND, OH.- The Cleveland Museum of Art has acquired a rare screen that demonstrates European and Chinese influences on Korean art from the Joseon period. Consisting of ten-panels depicting the personal objects of a Confucian scholar, the screen uses European techniques of linear perspective to portray Chinese subject matter. This is Dr. Seunghye Sun’s first acquisition for the Cleveland Museum of Art since she became associate curator of Japanese and Korean art in June 2010. With this acquisition, the museum continues to augment its internationally-renowned Asian collection as it moves toward the completion of its building expansion and Asian collection reinstallation in 2013.

“This most recent acquisition demonstrates the museum’s renewed focus on its Asian art program,” stated C. Griffith Mann, Ph.D, the museum’s deputy director and chief curator. “Works of art like this nineteenth-century screen not only enhance the museum’s developing collection of Korean art, but also create visible links to our remarkable holdings of Chinese porcelains. Intact screens of this genre exist in public collections, but works of this quality rarely appear on the market.”

Screens depicting scholar’s accouterments (chaekgori) became a popular status symbol in Korea after King Jeongjo (r. 1776-1800) placed one behind his desk in the men’s quarters of his palace. Despite their popularity, not many screens survived, and very few demonstrate the influence of European and Chinese culture on the Joseon period. This bold and decorative folding screen displays a still life painting that highlights a Confucian scholar's collection of texts and personal objects displayed on a bookcase or in a curio cabinet. The narrow shelves are stacked with books and treasures of varying sizes and shapes, including ancient bronzes for the rituals of ancestor worship, porcelain flower vases--some of them expensive Chinese imports--a Chinese-style table, bowls and dishes, a metal vase holding peacock feathers, a coral branch and a bowl of fruit. Most important are the "four treasures of the scholar's studio," namely, the rolled scrolls, rushes, an ink stone, and ink sticks that a scholar would commonly use in his study.

This screen, Scholar's Accouterments will substantially strengthen the museum’s Korean screen collection. It will be displayed in the new Korean Gallery, which opens in 2013. The acquisition was approved by a special quorum of the Collections Committee of the Cleveland Museum of Art’s Board of Trustees.