Curator & Collector

Table from the National Palace Museum in Seoul

While on my Korea trip, I visited the National Palace Museum of South Korea. This museum, newly located next to Gyeongbokgung (the palace in front of the Presidential mansion) now has a subway exit to the #3 line located right next to the building, making access easier than it used to be. In fact, the museum was formerly housed on the grounds at the small palace of Deoksugung a short distance away; I worked more or less across the street from it at that time. Gyeongbokgung, of course, also houses the National Folk Museum of Korea, but I had no time to visit that museum on this trip.

In general, this museum is a good one: well-laid out, with some English. The museum primarily focuses on the Choseon dynasty’s imperial housing, science, and clothes. Unfortunately, most of the textiles in this museum are replicas. (The Textiles Museum housed at Sookmyung Women’s University has many authentic textiles.) There is furniture, a photograph exhibit of the royal family, and a model of a reconstruction (!) of a princely placenta-holder. Perhaps the most interesting exhibit–for me–was the pair of turn-of-the-century cars in the basement of the museum. The restored cars had wooden bodies covered in red lacquer.

This historical tidbit was particularly amusing to me because a certain someone I know had his car repaired with wood by his mechanic brother, but we won’t say anything more about that!

One small curatorial touch that I particularly appreciated was the way one of the imperial books was displayed, using an unobtrusive transparent weight to hold the book open:

Finally, since the museum is located on palace grounds–itself a huge outdoor museum–there is much to be seen and learned in the immediate vicinity. The next few photos show some of the views of Gyeongbokgung.

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As a footnote, it is worth mentioning that the gate largely destroyed by an arsonist is being rebuilt, mostly with new materials. I took no photographs of the reconstruction of that gate. Unfortunately, the main gate at Gyeongbokgung is also being “restored” at the present, which means that Seoul has been deprived of two of its most famous gates for the time being.