Chairman's Message

Chairman,
Kansong Art and Culture Foundation
Youngwoo Jeon

I regard the establishment of the Kansong Art and Culture Foundation in August 2013 as a historic beginning. The foundation’s goals are the systematic preservation and intense study of ancient Korean art.

This foundation originates in the ancient works of art—the very flower of Korean culture—that Chun Hyungpil (pen name Kansong) spent his entire life collecting. Kansong established Bohwagak, Korea’s first private art museum, in 1938 to keep his collection from being scattered around the country.

But for various reasons, the Kansong Collection was not made available to the general public during Kansong’s lifetime. After his untimely death in 1962, Kansong’s family members and figures in the art world established the Center for the Study of Korean Arts in 1966, which initiated a serious study of the Kansong Collection.

Bohwagak was renamed the Kansong Art Museum in 1971, which is also when the artwork in the collection began to be shown to the public. During the 50 or so years since then, the museum has held exhibitions every spring and fall based on what researchers have learned about the collected pieces. Those decades of sustained effort have paid off in the form of public engagement and support.

The Kansong Art and Culture Foundation sought to respond to Koreans’ growing interest in ancient artwork by holding a series of exhibitions for the general public at Dongdaemun Design Plaza (DDP) from 2014 to 2019. That was an opportunity for even more people to commune with the ancestors who can be regarded as the progenitors of Korean contemplation through visual art.

In awareness of our responsibility for preserving the cultural properties that Kansong passed down to future generations, we built a new storage in 2022 to enable us to more systematically manage those artifacts. And in 2024, we wrapped up a painstaking restoration process of Bohwagak, which had faithfully hosted the storage, research, and exhibition of the collection for 80 or so years.

Korean art is not merely the expression of beauty—it is the material embodiment of Korean history, Korean lives, and Korean very spirit. In this era of globalization, therefore, our task is to further enhance the distinctive Korean spirit handed down from the past and harmonize it with the brilliant expressions of human culture found around the world. That is cultural globalization in the true sense of the word.

The Kansong Art and Culture Foundation will spare no efforts and no expenses in achieving those ends. We also pledge to serve as a link between the past, present, and future of Korean culture, and to strive to become the hub of cultural communication with the world. We appreciate your interest.