Partnership with the National Museum of Korea

In 2023 we were successful in our application to the Overseas Korean Galleries Support Program run by the National Museum of Korea.  

The Oriental Museum has been awarded $130,000 for a two year project. This generous award is fully funding a full-time post for a Curator of Korean Collections at the Oriental Museum.  Lauren Barnes, previously Assistant Curator for Asia at the National Museum of Scotland, joined us in April 2024 to take up this role.  

In the first year of the project we are focusing on creating an exhibition on the most important donors to our Korean collections, Richard and Joan Rutt. This exhibition, Knitted Together: the Korean Lives and Legacies of Richard and Joan Rutt, will open at the end of September 2024.  The exhibition will be accompanied by the publication of an edited volume including Richard Rutt's unfinished autobiography alongside essays from a range of experts.  The exhibition and book launch will be accompanied by an events programme and will run until early May 2025. 

At the same time, Lauren will be cataloguing new additions to the Korean collections and carrying out a review of the whole collection.  This collections review will support the creation of a new collections development plan for Korea, a strategy for increasing the use of the Korean collections in university teaching and finally the redisplay of the permanent Korean gallery at the Oriental Museum.  

We hope this exciting project will lead to deepening partnership with the National Museum of Korea over the longer term.