Hi I'm Eleanor Hyun,
I'm the curator for the Korean collections,
and welcome to my corner.
Unlike some people in this museum...
Irving...
I did not grow up thinking I would end up working
at the British Museum.
Perhaps that logical being that I was born and raised
in New York City to immigrant parents.
So, the British Museum, even London,
working in London wasn't really on the career path
or my future radar.
In becoming a curator, or even thinking about it
again, not really knowing what that meant when
I was 15 years old or 20.
It has been an incredible journey that one has to take
and again, these objects - that's what draws me in
and that's what fascinates me, to be able to really
think about the objects, both accurately and properly
and then to display them in a way that is
understandable and decipherable for others,
there is a huge amount of background that one
must acquire to be able to distill down a story or a narrative.
The British Museum is the British Museum, so it has
a reputation and a history that is illustrious and amazing,
and to think that I was going to be part of it is both
an honour, but to be really realistic also, you feel
a huge responsibility and therefore...
a little bit of stress.
Being responsible for the Korean collections means
being responsible for 6000 years of history.
So, from prehistory to the present and what is the
Korean Penisula in East Asia?
A lot of times, people think museum displays are
permanent.
They get installed and they're sort of hermetically
sealed and will be the same for about 10 years.
Thankfully, for those who work in East Asian art
or any person who has to deal with conservation
issues, so particularly works on paper and on textiles,
you have to think about conserving the objects so they
can't be on view for that long.
The Korea gallery has two rotations a year, so there'll
be significant changes made in parts of the gallery
because a lot of these objects have to come off view
and that actually makes it really fun because
it gives you an excuse, when you're sort of caught up
with all these other busy things,
to think about new things to put in the gallery -
we have plenty of objects in storage, so why just
show the same things - why not give something else
a chance to see the light of day?
So, that's really nice and it actually provides really
a great opportunity for me to think about objects
that one haven't been on view or two maybe they
have been on view but thinking about putting them
in a different thematic setting.
At the moment, I've been planning the next rotation
and the theme is new moons and it's playing off
the fact that the Lunar New Year is fast approaching
and so, thinking about the words 'lunar' and 'new'
I thought I would try to create a thematic rotation
that dealt with a lot of these new acquisitions that
we have, some of them have not yet been exhibited
in the galleries or some have yet to be displayed.
It's not that you just sort of come as a curator and are
left to play with the things that you have,
but that you really can think about how these objects
speak to contemporary life but also how there are other
objects that help sort of broaden and create a fuller
picture of sort of Korean art and society.
So that's really one of the areas that it's actually quite
fun because you feel like you're on a scavenger hunt
maybe, that you get to go to places like art fairs
and galleries and you see objects and you think;
'Wow, that's an incredible piece'
and some things that I am just personally drawn to,
I can see a piece and think it's so striking or it has
so much going on that really draws me in and attracts
me - but then I'll think about it and think
'Hmm, one could this be in the British Museum'
and sometimes you really have to think about very
practical things: size for example.
There are pieces that I would love to have but are just
too big for the gallery space, so therefore you can't
show it and so why have it if you can't show it?
That I feel like is even sadder, to just be able to have
something and just put it in storage the whole time.
Then there are other things that you think are really
quite interesting and striking but how does it relate
to the objects that we already have here and what kinds
of narratives are you creating?
So when you think about objects and you see them and
they're interesting and you realise;
Oh this would perfectly link with objects we have from the
17th Century but it's a 21st Century artist who is making
these links, using different kinds of materials,
so then you have...you sort of fall in love with an object
because one, you think it is incredible as a piece on its
own, but then you also see how it makes all these
connections and it can really highlight and just illuminate
so much more of what's happening,
both what happened in the past but it's also what's
happening now in the present.
There's one object recently acquired that really spoke
to, I thought, both traditional techniques and materials,
but in a very contemporary way.
It's a double carved vase, so it means that it has,
it's a ceramic piece that has an inner vase and it has
also an outer shell, but that's been carved.
So it actually looks like sort of a wood carving,
surrounding or engulfing a ceramic vase.
But if you look really closely, it's really just ceramic
on ceramic with varnish so I love that kind of
playfulness that he has with taking the ceramics
and the ceramic materials but then adding an
element that actually makes one think that it's
wood - and I thought that was so beautifully
expressed in the piece.
Then it also sort of, for me in the British Museum and
our collection, it took it one step further because
we have an actual lacquer piece, contemporary piece
that looks like a ceramic so often people think
it's just the ceramic piece.
So there's this kind of playfulness in materials and how
often now artists are using materials in ways so it's
not as obvious.
So, we have a lacquer piece that looks like a ceramic,
and now we've just acquired a ceramic piece that
looks like lacquer wood.
So we'll be displaying them together in the gallery
because a lot of the underlying sentiments are the same,
and that's what I think the beauty of creativity is
and how contemporary artists are melding the past
and the present.
That was my corner.
If I was going to swap a corner with anyone, it would be
Jago Cooper, because I would like to know more about
Mesoamerica.