This symposium of two half-day presentations and Q&A sessions celebrates the achievements of the Amorepacific Project for the conservation of Korean paintings at the British Museum from 2018–2022. It will be conducted in real time by moderators with a simultaneous translation between English and Korean.
The British Museum collection of Korean paintings includes those mounted on scrolls, folding screens, modern flat screens in frames, and in cardboard window mounts. The Amorepacific Project has aimed to ensure the conservation of the Korean paintings in the collection uses appropriate techniques and materials based on researching Korean historical mounting.
Korean paintings have unique qualities less well-known than other East Asian paintings. Older Korean paintings can be found to have been treated using Japanese or Chinese materials and restoration techniques. Through collaboration with Korean specialists – including scroll mounters and dyers – the Amorepacific Project Conservator was able to develop skills and knowledge of traditional Korean scroll mounting. These skills were then used alongside other Asian and Western conservation techniques and approaches for the treatment of selected items in the collection. Research into Korean mounting textiles and their dyeing has been rewarded with new findings.
Speakers:
Meejung Kim-Marandet is the Amorepacific Project Conservator for Korean Paintings at the British Museum. She studied art history at Hong-ik University, Seoul, and did an MA in Conservation-Restoration of Cultural Property at Paris 1 Pantheon-Sorbonne University. She trained in traditional East Asian methods of conservation and remounting at the Hirayama Studio at the British Museum, first as a student and then as a doctoral fellow. She was appointed East Asian Paintings Conservator in 2014 and in 2017 for two one-year contracts. In 2018, she received a PhD from Paris-Sorbonne University (Paris IV) on the mounting of Joseon-dynasty Korean paintings.
Sang-ah Kim joined the British Museum in October 2021 as Curator of Korean collections. After majoring in Chinese language and literature for her BA and MA at Korea University in Seoul, she moved to the US to pursue an MA in art history at the University of Oregon. She then spent three years at the Portland Art Museum as a Curatorial Fellow in Asian Art, where she curated exhibitions on historical and contemporary Korean and Chinese art. She is currently pursuing a PhD at SOAS University of London.
Diego Tamburini is an analytical chemist with a PhD in the use of chromatographic and mass spectrometric techniques for the characterisation of organic materials. He joined the British Museum in 2016 with an Andrew W. Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship focusing on the dye analysis of historical and archaeological textiles. In 2020, he moved to the National Museum of Asian Art as a Smithsonian Postdoctoral Fellow. In 2021, Tamburini joined the British Museum again in his current role as Scientist: Polymeric and Modern Organic Materials and has worked on a wide range of Asian textiles.
