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The journey of bojagi to the West: from an everyday object in Korea to the realm of art in the United States

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The journey of bojagi to the West: from an everyday object in Korea to the realm of art in the United States

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The Journey of Bojagi to the West:
From an Everyday Object in Korea to the Realm of Art in the United States

Jaewon Shin

In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Master of Arts Degree
In East Asian Area Studies at the University of Southern California
Los Angeles, California
December 2019

Dr. Miya Elise Mizuta Lippit, Ph.D.
Thesis Committee Chair

Dr. Youngmin Choe, Ph.D.
Committee Member

Dr. Brian Bernards, Ph.D.
Committee Member

Table of Contents

Abstract ….....………………………………………………………………………………………… 1
Introduction ...………………………………………………………………………………………… 2
Section 1. The origins of exhibitions featuring bojagi in the United States
1.1. Bojagi, an everyday object that became a collectible: Huh Dong-hwa’s collection ……. 7
1.2. The introduction of bojagi to American audiences: Korean Costumes and Textiles (1992)..13
1.3. Profusion of Color (1995-1996), bojagi’s “leap” into museum exhibitions in the United
States ……………………………………………………………………………………….. 19
Section 2. Bojagi collections in American museums
2.1. The “carrying cloth” of an American envoy in the late

nineteenth century……………. 25
2.2. The introduction of Korean art in the United States and emergence of bojagi ………... 31
2.3. Bojagi collections in American museums in the late twentieth and early twenty-first
centuries ……………………………………………………………………………………. 44
Conclusion ………………………………………………………………………………………….. 55
Bibliography ………………………………………………………………………………………... 61

1

Abstract
Bojagi, traditional Korean wrapping cloths, are multifunctional as they can wrap,
cover, and carry other objects. As they were considered utilitarian and commonly found in
Korean households, it was not until the 1960s that bojagi became collectibles. Huh Dong-
hwa (1926 – 2018) built the significant bojagi collection throughout his career as a collector
and his collection traveled to the U.S. and many other countries and those exhibitions
enabled bojagi to be seen from a perspective where their visual quality is much appreciated.
A major exhibition that introduced the aesthetic of bojagi to American audience was
Profusion of Color (1995-1996). Since the significant travel exhibitions by major American
museums, bojagi has become incorporated into the museum collections in the United States.
Bojagi shows the vibrant quality of Korean art which is quite disparate from the “simple and
modest beauty” of Korean art which previously dominated the narrative of Korean art. Along
with the current to show various aspects of Korean art and the increasing opportunity to
show Korean art in American museums, bojagi has entered the realm of art in the United
States.
Today, bojagi is housed by American museums and the multifunctional household
item has earned another “function” as an artwork in museum proper. As hanging on the wall
or laying inside the showcase, bojagi evokes varied sentiments when shown to broader
audiences.

2

Introduction
When Do Ho Suh (1962-), a Korea-born artist known for his installation works, traveled to
Los Angeles in 1999 from his hometown Seoul, he brought his work Seoul Home/L.A. Home (Figure
1) with him, inside his suitcase. Made of translucent jade-colored silk that replicated the shape of the
artist’s childhood home in Seoul, this work, a piece of fabric loaded with personal memories, was
folded and packed carefully to mark the start of Suh’s long journey. The title of the work
subsequently changed to Seoul Home/L.A. Home/New York Home/Baltimore Home/London
Home/Seattle Home/L.A. Home (hereafter referred to as Seoul Home...)
1
reflecting its itinerant
journey, and Seoul Home... is among Suh’s signature series for which he is best known. Since first
moving to the United States in 1993,
2
Suh has lived in numerous cities and as his art increasingly
received more acclaim, he and his “home” traveled to more and more places. Instead of resigning

1
It was first presented at Korean Cultural Center Los Angeles in 1999 and later acquired by Museum of
Contemporary Art Los Angeles.
2
Suh received a BFA and MFA in Oriental painting from Seoul National University in 1985 and 1987
respectively. He moved to the United States in 1993 to attend Rhode Island School of Design where he later earned
his BFA in 1994. He continued to pursue his study at Yale University and earned an MFA in sculpture in 1997.
Figure 1 Do Ho Suh. Seoul Home/L.A. Home. 1999 (https://ivc.lib.rochester.edu/the-
nomads-baggage-imagining-the-nation-in-a-global-world/, accessed August 1, 2019)
3

himself to simply missing his home, which could not possibly be moved around the world from place
to place, Suh turned the static space of his home into a transportable, foldable work that could
accompany him all the time. Throughout his career, Suh has explored the meaning of home as
something that transcends geographical boundaries and has pondered the notion of cultural
displacement.
3
The viewer of Seoul Home… walks under the lightweight work, which is hung from
the ceiling, and each person who encounters it interprets the work individually. Those who share the
same cultural heritage as the artist might be reminded, as they view the suspended artwork, of
various aspects of traditional Korean culture--the shape of Korean houses, the materiality of Korean
clothes, the hue of Korean celadon--while others might viscerally experience the sheer vastness of
the image itself and the ethereal atmosphere it creates. Whether one associates the work with Korean
culture or not, each viewer sees Seoul Home… in their own way and encounters through it a unique
sentiment. As the journey of Seoul Home… continues and the work resonates with viewers from
diverse backgrounds, the meaning of the work expands and becomes further multilayered.
Likewise, the journey of bojagi, traditional Korean wrapping cloths, to the United States and
many other countries around the world has enabled the utilitarian item to evoke varied sentiments
when shown to broader audiences. This paper is initiated by a simple curiosity about how and when
bojagi traveled from Korea to the United States and became treasured objects in art museums. By
closely reading the history of collections and exhibitions of bojagi in the United States, this paper
seeks to understand how these artifacts are consumed by American museums in particular and what
may have facilitated their inclusion in the domain of the art museum. Since they are made of
lightweight fabric, bojagi can be folded and packed with ease and are highly transportable. They
were still an essential part of Korean daily life in the 1950s but have gradually become less

3
“Do Ho Suh: ‘Seoul Home/L.A. Home’ – Korea and Displacement,” Art 21, accessed Aug. 10, 2019,
https://art21.org/read/do-ho-suh-seoul-home-la-home-korea-and-displacement/
4

functional over time. Following their journey abroad outside Korea, bojagi are now frequently seen
in art museums in the United States and have found therein a new home of sorts.
One such example of bojagi’s international
journey can be found at the Metropolitan Museum of
Art, New York’s Essential Korea (June 7, 2018 –
September 22, 2019) exhibition, where visitors to the
Arts of Korea Gallery are first greeted by two jogakbo
(Jogakbo is a sort of bojagi that is made by patchwork.
Further explanation will be provided later in this
paper.),
4
traditional Korean wrapping cloths with
patchwork, and Hommage to the Square: On Near Sky
(1963), a representative work from a series by Josef
Albers (1888-1976). The jogakbo are individually placed
inside transparent acrylic cases and juxtaposed with an
abstract painting of the German-born American artist
that hangs on the same grey wall (Figure 2). Explanatory wall text placed at a slight distance enables
viewers to see the image of the three colorful works unhindered by information. Among the four
jogakbo in the collection of Korean art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, these two were
specifically chosen for display next to Hommage to the Square, possibly for their compositional
similarity and shared colorfulness. The wall text for the jogakbo describes the “striking visual
exercise in geometric abstraction”
5
that the vibrant color combination and concentric configuration

4
For the romanization of Korean, this paper uses revised Romanization, the system Korea officially
adopted in 2000. Exhibition titles, book titles, and personal names that do not follow the revised system due to
publication before the year 2000, personal preference, long-time usage, or for other reasons, appear in the original or
preferred form.
5
Wall Text, Essential Korea, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
Figure 2 Unidentified Artist. Patchwork
wrapping cloths (jogakbo). Ca.1950-80, Josef
Albers, Hommage to the Square: On Near
Sky. 1963. Metropolitan Museum of Art,
New York
5

present and also mentions Bauhaus textiles and Piet Mondrian as points of comparison, highlighting
the “strong aesthetic of abstraction”
6
that the jogakbo create. Here, the jogakbo is appreciated for its
visual quality, not for its functionality or its symbolism. Although the wall text acknowledges the
“thriftiness” of the women who have created jogakbo and reads “the tradition of patchwork textiles
from the late Joseon period, which were created by women of all social classes and have their origins
in creative thriftiness,”
7
it mainly discusses the aesthetics of jogakbo, comparing the artistic
sensibility of the unnamed women to that of renowned artists. The very fact that jogakbo are included
among the 88 objects that represent Korean art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, arguably one of
the most prestigious art museums in the United States, if not the world, supports the claim that
jogakbo is now formally, that is institutionally, accepted as a work of fine art. Today, in addition to
the Metropolitan Museum of Art, museums in the United States like the Los Angeles County
Museum of Art, Asian Art Museum San Francisco, Philadelphia Museum of Art, Art Institute of
Chicago, and Museum of Fine Arts Boston, to name a few, house jogakbo in their collections.
Jogakbo, once utilitarian items made by everyday Korean women, have been incorporated into the
sphere of fine or high art in American museums, where their aesthetics are studied and their beauty is
appreciated.
Jogakbo is a compound noun composed of jogak 조각, which means pieces, and bo 보 褓,
which refers to bojagi, of which jogakbo are one type. Bojagi 보자기 are traditional Korean
wrapping cloths used for wrapping up gifts, keeping things together for storage, carrying items,
covering food, and more. They are usually square in shape, come in various sizes and patterns, and
were commonly used and seen in Korea until roughly the 1950s.
8
Bojagi can be classified based on
the social status of their users, the purpose they serve, and their construction, material, and design

6
Wall Text, Essential Korea, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
7
Wall Text, Essential Korea, Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
8
Kumja Paik Kim, The Art of Korea: Highlights from the Collection of San Francisco’s Asian Art
Museum, (San Francisco: Asian Art Museum, 2006), 288.
6

features; each subcategory has a name with the suffix bo at the end.
9

First, bojagi are divided broadly
into gungbo 궁보 宮褓 and minbo 민보 民褓: gungbo for the court and minbo for commoners.
Sorted based on function, some examples of bojagi would be sangbo 상보 床褓, which cover food
tables, ibulbo 이불보, which wraps and ties up bedding, and yemulbo 예물보 禮物褓, which a
groom’s family encloses a letter and gift of fabrics to the bride’s family. In the case of jogakbo, the
name is derived from how the bojagi is made and the design that results from this process.
10
As the
literal meaning of jogak, pieces, suggests, jogakbo are made of pieces and strips of fabric left from
making clothes or bedding, an activity that comprised a significant part of Korean women’s
housework. To date, no jogakbo showing any trace of production or usage in court has been found;
11

as such, all extant jogakbo fall under minbo.
12
Jogakbo were made exclusively by female commoners
and most surviving jogakbo are from the eighteenth to twentieth centuries. Throughout this paper, the
words bojagi and jogakbo will appear frequently but the primarily focus will be on jogakbo as it is
usually the kind of bojagi that is appreciated and preserved in today’s art museums in the United
States.
As mentioned above, this paper aims to follow bojagi’s journey to the United States and to
do so, it is imperative to start by looking into the beginning of bojagi collection in Korea and the
history of exhibitions of Korean art in the United States. It is important to examine each exhibition as
each one provided an opportunity for the public to be exposed not only to the image of the object but
also the culture behind the object. Also, each exhibition provided an outlet for scholarly research
related to bojagi and Korean art through articles and publications. Although bojagi, especially

9
For more information about the names and characteristics of each category of bojagi, see Kumja Paik
Kim “A Celebration of Life” in Young-Key Kim-Renaud, ed., Creative Women of Korea, 166, 169.
10
Kim, The Art of Korea, 62.
11
Kim, The Art of Korea, 53.
12
Therefore, a bojagi can be a minbo, sangbo, and jogakbo all at the same time depending on how it is
categorized.
7

jogakbo, have been displayed or collected by museums in other countries such as Japan, the UK,
Australia and more, the scope of this paper is limited to the case of the United States. Section 1 traces
two exhibitions in the United States that took bojagi as their main object, starting from the outset of
bojagi collection in Korea by Huh Dong-hwa
13
(1926 – 2018), the former director of the Museum of
Korean Embroidery. The majority of the objects for these two exhibitions were loaned from Huh’s
collection; hence it is crucial to begin by looking into how Huh started his collection when bojagi
were not perceived as collectible within Korea. Section 2 considers bojagi collection in American
museums from the very first bojagi acquisition in the 1880s by the United States National Museum
to the various jogakbo in art museums of the present day. By examining the contrast between the
acquisition of bojagi in the late nineteenth century and that of more recent years and the absence of
bojagi in American museums between these two time periods, this paper aims to understand how a
traditional utilitarian object from Korea has now become a museum object separated in time and
space from its original production and consumption.

Section 1. The origins of exhibitions featuring bojagi in the United States
1.1. Bojagi, an everyday object that became a collectible: Huh Dong-hwa’s collection
Bojagi were made by women and until the mid-twentieth century the versatile textile was
commonly used every day at home and also for special occasions like weddings. The bojagi is a
multifaceted object by nature, flexible not only in terms of material, but also its versatility of use. It

13
In Korea, the family name precedes the given name and this paper follows the Korean convention. If a
person is active in the United States and his or her name has regularly appeared in the opposite order, it appears that
way in this paper as well.
8

can cover another object and be used to wrap it up tightly if necessary. If the object inside needs to be
transferred, the knot on the top of the tied bojagi can easily become a handle. Besides its multiple
functions, its symbolism still resonates with Korean people and is often highlighted when bojagi are
introduced in Korea even today. The etymology of bojagi is often explained with the word bok 복 福
(blessings), for the phonetic similarity between the two words, and the wishing heart and effort of the
maker, usually the mother or grandmother of the family, as is often noted when bojagi are discussed
in Korea. Also, since jogakbo were made of remnants of fabric that could have been thrown away,
the frugality of Korean women, which was especially valued in Confucian society, is also
emphasized. Although there is no “artist’s statement” or any sort of records that could be passed on,
the exuberant colors and refined composition of jogakbo are often interpreted as a means of self-
expression for Korean women under the rigid social atmosphere of Joseon (1392-1910).
14

Except for one bojagi used by Daegak
Guksa Uicheon (1055 – 1101) in Goryeo (918 –
1392), all surviving bojagi date from and after
Joseon dynasty.
15
The oldest surviving jogakbo
(Figure 3) was found in 2005 among excavated
relics found inside the Wooden seated Vairocana
Buddha 비로자나불좌상 毘盧舍那佛坐像 in
Haeinsa, Hapcheon, Korea, and the statue and
relics were designated in 2012 as Treasure
No.1777 of Korea. Since the relics were inserted
in the statue in 1490, this confirms that the history

14
Kumja Paik Kim, and Dong-hwa Huh. Profusion of Color: Korean Costumes & Wrapping Cloths of the
Chosŏn Dynasty, (San Francisco: Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, 1995), 32.
15
Kim, and Huh. Profusion of Color, 28.

Figure 3 The jogakbo (ca. 1490) from Wooden
seated Vairocana Buddha, Haeinsa, Hapcheon,
Korea. Yonhap News, Aug. 23, 2012
(https://news.naver.com/main/read.nhn?oid=001&
aid=0005772714, accessed Jun. 6, 2019)
9

of jogakbo goes back at least to the early years of Joseon. The Vairocana Buddha jogakbo might
have been used for Buddhist ritual originally, but many of the surviving bojagi and related sources
verify that at least since the Joseon era, bojagi had been widely used by all classes of people and had
been an indispensable item in Korean daily life until around the 1950s.
There are bojagi made in recent years by artists who create them as artwork,
16
but those from
before the 1960s were not meant to be sold
17
and collected. Huh Dong-hwa was a public officer when
he started his collection of embroidery works and different sorts of bojagi in the mid-1960s. In the
1950s, like many others who were beginning to collect Korean artifacts at that time he was first
interested in ceramics, but then saw foreign visitors buying colorful bojagi at nominal prices.
18
The
potential fluidity of the bojagi might have been in part what attracted foreigners, because they were
lightweight and foldable and could therefore be easily transported out of Korea. Witnessing this
fueled Huh’s interest in bojagi and other textiles. In the 1960s, although only among some curiosos,
the activity of searching for and collecting traditional paintings, ceramics, and metalcraft began to
rise in Korea. Also, businesses such as antique shops, picture frame shops, and calligraphy brush
shops settled into Insa-dong, once known as the largest market for antiques and artwork in Korea and
currently one of the most popular tourist destinations in Seoul. Even then utilitarian items including
bojagi or those defined as folk art attracted little attention.
19
Since bojagi were not sought-after items
among Koreans then, they would have easily started to disappear if no one had collected and
preserved them in Korea. Furthermore, the functionality of bojagi began to be supplanted by other
objects imported with the influx of foreign influence: Western-style bags, plastic bags, closets and

16
Some of these active artists are Youngmin Lee, Chunghie Lee, Wonju Seo, Kumjoo Ahn, all based in
different regions of the United States. These artists explore existing techniques and attempt to bring their own
modern interpretations to bear. (Magali An Berthon, “Korean Patchwork.” Cooper Hewitt Object of the Day. Jan.
31, 2017)
17
Kim, The Art of Korea, 272.
18
Dong-hwa Huh, Byungmo Chung, eds. Bojagi Halbae, Huh Dong-hwa, (Seoul: SniFactory, 2015), 82.
19
Chiho Kim, Oraedoen areumdaum, (Paju, South Korea: Art Books, 2016), 33.
10

more. The everyday object no longer performed its function as much as it previously did, and at the
same time, it was still not perceived as a rarity or a collector’s item in Korea. According to Huh, he
felt some sense of mission to protect traditional Korean textiles and turned his attention to
embroidery and bojagi.
20

Huh, a native of Bongsan, Hwanghae-do, in modern day North Korea relocated to Seoul.
21

His collection grew through the 1960s, and he left his job in 1973 to become a professional collector.
He and his wife founded the Museum of Korean Embroidery 한국자수박물관 in Seoul in 1976.
22
A
total of more than 3,000 items including about 1,000 bojagi became part of the museum’s collection
over time. It was the first and foremost collection that recognized the aesthetic value of bojagi in
Korea.
23
Huh contributed immensely to the transformation of the bojagi from a mundane object into
a collectible by initiating and continuing his practice of collecting these artifacts. After noticing the
dearth of research on the history and aesthetic of bojagi, he tried to find historical sources where
bojagi were mentioned
24
and produced multiple publications illustrating how bojagi were produced

20
Huh, Chung, eds. Bojagi Halbae, 82.
21
Huh and his wife Park Young-sook (1932-) married in 1955. Park, a former director of Sajeon Dentistry
and a dentist, also built a significant collection of Korean utilitarian items including exquisite pieces of dadeumidol
다듬이돌, cloth-smoothing boards, indu 인두, long-handled irons, banjidgori 반짓고리, sewing boxes, and more.
All of the 631 items from her collection were donated to the National Museum of Korea in 1996 and 1998, and they
are displayed at the Park Young-sook Gallery in the museum, located in Yongsan, Seoul. In many publications, Huh
thanks Park for giving him an opportunity to devote himself to his collection with her constant financial and
emotional support.
22
Prior to the opening of the museum, Huh and Park opened a small space for displays in 1969 inside the
dental clinic in which Park practiced. The name of the museum was once changed to Sajeon Embroidery Museum
사전자수박물관 in 1994 after Huh’s sobriquet, Sajeon 사전 絲田 , then regained its original name in 1996.
23
Besides Huh’s collection, the National Museum of Korea 국립중앙박물관 and National Folk Museum
of Korea 국립민속박물관 have bojagi in their collections, and some private specialty museums such as the Chojun
Textile & Quilt Art Museum 초전섬유.퀼트박물관, Korean Stone Art Museum 우리옛돌박물관 in Seoul, and
Museum of Natural Dye Arts 자연염색박물관 in Daegu also house bojagi in their collection.
24
For the detailed entries, see Huh, Dong-hwa. Ireoke sojunghan bojagi yeoksa [The Precious History of
Korean Wrapping Cloth], (Seoul: The Museum of Korean Embroidery Publishing Department, 2004).
11

and used, what they symbolized, and the wisdom and artistic sensibility of Korean women.
25
Due to
the scarcity of scholarly work on bojagi and his devoted research, Huh’s writings have become
valuable sources referenced many times by articles and catalogues discussing bojagi. From the
opening of the museum until its closure in 2018,
26
Huh’s collection had been continuously shown
through various exhibitions within and outside the museum. In 1978, the Classical Korean
Embroidery Exhibition 한국자수특별전 (Figure 4) was at the National Museum of Korea. It was
not devoted to bojagi exclusively, as the exhibits included embroidered screens, hyungbae,
embroidered square rank badges sewn onto the garments of officials, and more, but it was significant

25
This paper is indebted not only to the different writings by Huh, but also to the meticulous records kept
by the museum regarding its exhibition history, related articles, photographs, and more. Even though the museum
has been closed since 2018, the website of the Museum of Korean Embroidery still offers an e-book which offers a
compilation of the materials that had been archived. Thanks to the museum’s foresight and generosity, this work
benefited from the great resource. Hopefully it will be helpful for future works related to bojagi and the collection
and exhibition of them.
26
The museum was permanently closed in 2018 after Huh passed away the same year, but before his death,
the entire collection was donated to the city of Seoul, and it will be available for the public to see at the Seoul Craft
Museum which is slated to open in 2020.
Figure 4 The poster image of Classical
Korean Embroidery Exhibition (1978)
Figure 5 The poster image of Beauty of Korea
(1988)
12

that bojagi, still perceived as mundane by the Korean audience outside the museum, became part of a
special exhi bition at a prestigious institution like the National Museum of Korea. The exhibition
brought approximately 110,000 visitors,
27
and its success led to another exhibition in 1988, Beauty of
Korea 한국의 미 (Figure 5). This subsequent exhibition was also displayed at the National Museum
of Korea and was organized as a part of the Seoul Olympic Art Festival. As the poster suggests,
bojagi, especially jogakbo, became the face of the exhibition, and at the time of exhibition, Huh’s
research on bojagi and the images of 250 works from the collection were turned into a book, The
Wonder Cloth 옛 보자기
28
with English translations as well. Around the time of the 1988 Summer
Olympics, when Korea was drawing interest all around the world, bojagi from Huh’s collection were
first presented as representative of the “Beauty of Korea.” Various designs of bojagi from Huh’s
collection had already traveled to overseas exhibitions as well. Some early examples are Traditional
Embroidery of Korea 韓国の古刺繍 at the Korean Cultural Center, Tokyo, Japan, in 1979, Classic
Korean Embroidery Klassische Koreanische Stickerei at the Keramion Museum, Keln, Germany, in
1983, and Korean Embroidery at the Victoria & Albert Museum, UK, in 1984, among many. For
about 50 years, the bojagi collection from the Museum of Korean Embroidery was displayed at 45
exhibitions in 11 countries.
29
Although some of these exhibitions seem more than others like
diplomatic events commemorating the friendship between the host countries and Korea and were
financially supported by the Korean government for the sake of “promoting” Korean culture, the fact
that exhibitions inside and outside Korea gave the Korean audience an opportunity to see bojagi from
a different perspective and audiences overseas a chance to be exposed to the beauty of Korean
culture beyond ceramics or paintings should not be underestimated.

27
“11 만 관객 부른 전통자수전,” Hankook Ilbo (Seoul, Korea), Aug. 20, 1978
28
Published by the Museum of Korean Embroidery in 1988.
29
See Huh, Bojagi Halbae, 270-276, to find the entire list of overseas exhibitions of the Museum of Korean
Embroidery’s collection until 2015.
13

The beauty of bojagi must have been noticed even before bojagi became a collectible item by
Huh or visitors from overseas. Most households had jogakbo or other kinds of bojagi made by the
grandmother or mother of the family, and it is plausible that these were found to be “pretty” by other
family members then or later. However, it was not until Huh built his large-scale bojagi collection
and brought it before the public view that bojagi emerged from home, the private space, to the public
sphere. The establishment of the Museum of Korean Embroidery and the following exhibitions of the
collection both within and outside Korea transformed the bojagi from a personal keepsake to the
subject of continuous and aesthetic appreciation in exhibitions and museum galleries where the
public can access and enjoy it.

1.2. The introduction of bojagi to American audiences: Korean Costumes and Textiles
(1992)
Korean Costumes and Textiles 한국 전통생활의 미 (IBM Gallery of Science and Art, New
York, April 14 - June 13, 1992) (Figure 6) marks the first exhibition that introduced jogakbo as its
main object in the United States. This exhibition was co-organized by the Korean Overseas
Information Service (henceforth, KOIS) and IBM Corporation, and it was held at the IBM Gallery of
Science in Midtown New York, which was known for providing a venue for various exhibitions that
were externally organized until its closure in 1993.
30
As the self-explanatory title suggests, Korean
Costumes and Textiles showed a collection of hanbok, traditional Korean clothing, accessories that
could be worn with hanbok, and bojagi of different designs. Every bojagi displayed in the exhibition
was from the collection of the Museum of Korean Embroidery. The 56 bojagi comprised 37 jogakbo,
14 subo, which refer to embroidered bojagi, 3 painted bojagi, and 2 oiled paper bojagi. Since 1983,

30
Carol Vogel. “I.B.M. to Close Its Midtown Gallery.” New York Times, Mar. 23, 1993.
14

Huh’s bojagi collection had been presented outside Korea through 14 exhibitions in countries like
Japan, Germany, the United Kingdom, and France, but this exhibition in 1992 was the first time that
the bojagi from the collection traveled to the United States.
Although there are few records left regarding this
exhibition, the catalogue of Korean Costumes and Textiles
details the context in which bojagi were first introduced in
an exhibition setting in the United States. The catalogue
was published by IBM Korea as commemorating the 25th
anniversary of IBM Korea’s foundation, not by the IBM
Gallery of Science and Art. The catalogue includes
messages from Choi Chang-yoon, the then Minister of
Information of Korea who oversaw the KOIS, and Oh
Chang-Kyoo, the then CEO of IBM Korea. These short
writings are suitably referred to as “messages” rather than
“forewords” here since they are in fact brief greetings from
the heads of the two organizing parties rather than more
proper forewords that could have provided an overview of
the featured objects or further information on the curation of the exhibition. In his message, Choi
writes about the expectation that this event would differentiate the objects shown from traditional
Korean fine arts:

Unlike the previous Korean exhibitions overseas which have tended to emphasize
Korea’s traditional fine arts, this exhibition features costumes, personal ornaments,
and traditional items for daily use in the latter half of the Joseon Kingdom (1392-
1910).
I believe, therefore, that the exhibition will be an excellent opportunity for Americans
to gain an insight into the traditional lifestyle of the Korean people. As part of a
Figure 6 The poster image of Korean
Costumes and Textiles (1992)
15

cultural exchange program between Korea and the United States, the exhibition will
also help enhance mutual understanding between the peoples of the two countries.
31

Here, the bojagi is identified as one of the mundane items that show the lifestyle of people in the
Joseon dynasty, and the functionality of bojagi is clearly acknowledged. These everyday objects are
deemed as a means to help non-Koreans, Americans in this case, to understand the life of Korea in
the past; under this premise, bojagi still retains the sense of its original function although they are
displayed in the gallery such that people can neither try to use nor touch it.
It is also possible that the functionality of bojagi could be more clearly understood in this
exhibition because the bojagi were juxtaposed with other objects whose functions were more
obviously discernible. Other exhibits besides the 56 bojagi include robes, skirts, hats, shoes, hairpins,
eyeglass cases, and more. Even though the pieces of hanbok could look quite different from Western
clothing, the noticeable elements of costumes and accessories such as somae 소매, otgoreum
옷고름, and bok-jumeoni 복주머니 must have been easily matched to their Western equivalents:
sleeve, ribbon, and pouch, respectively. Furthermore, the language used to refer to each item may
have helped the process of developing an understanding of bojagi as functional items. Furthermore,
the language used to refer to each item may have helped the process. For example, the entry in the
exhibition catalogue that describes wonsam 원삼, a traditional bridal coat, is simply written as 원삼
in Korean, without Romanization, and as Bridal Coat in English. In the same manner, Dopo 도포 is
specified as Outer Robe and Jobawi 조바위 is specified as Women’s Winter Hat in the exhibition
catalogue. Given this approach to labeling the exhibits, a quick look at the wall text could help a
visitor to find the purpose of any object. Without any “unknown” words in its name, the functionality
of each item could be smoothly associated with the experience of viewing it. Therefore, even when a

31
Sŏng-mi Yi, Korean costumes and textiles: April 14-June 13, 1992, IBM Gallery of Science and Art
(Seoul: IBM Korea, 1992), 7.
16

visitor had never been exposed to traditional Korean culture before, he or she could have consumed
the image of the objects while imagining how they might have been used in Korean daily life. Along
the same lines, bojagi could be recognized as a utilitarian item more easily even without a detailed
account of what Koreans use them for in the past because of its juxtaposition with other costumes
and accessories and also because of the very fact that it was being introduced under the exhibition
title, Korean Costumes and Textiles.
While the conspicuous presence of bojagi’s functionality in 1992’s Korean Costumes and
Textiles supports the argument that they were still regarded at the time as a functional and practical
item rather than artwork, the “function” of the exhibition that is stated in the catalogue also bolsters
the idea that it was still too early to conclude that the status of bojagi had transformed from an
everyday utilitarian object to art. In his message, the president of IBM Korea, Oh, emphasizes the
continuing effort of IBM Korea to “preserve and develop Korean culture” since its establishment in
1967. He also adds: “We hope that the exhibition will contribute to Korea’s growing reputation as a
center of international activity.”
32
This rather ambitious remark illustrates that the focus of the
exhibition was to promote the national image of Korea and IBM Korea, a private company, rather
than recognizing the significance of the rare occurrence of presenting the objects in the United States.
As mentioned above, the exhibition was co-organized by IBM Korea and KOIS, a
government organization under the Ministry of Information. The venue, the IBM Gallery of Science
and Art did not play a critical role other than providing the space for the exhibition. The New York
Times article that reported the closure of the gallery as a cost-cutting measure in 1993—less than a
year after the last day of Korean Costumes and Textiles— describes the gallery as having “gained its
reputation by lending its large, well-maintained space to important traveling exhibitions that other

32
Yi, Korean costumes and textiles, 8.
17

New York museums either couldn't schedule or didn't want to pay for.”
33
Granted, it should not be
overlooked that the gallery enabled bojagi to be introduced to an American audience, especially in
the heart of New York City, where numerous art institutions and a highly engaged audience pool
could be found. However, as a gallery without any permanent collection or any experience in
organizing a special exhibition itself, the IBM Gallery of Science and Art could not or did not act as
an active agent to host this exhibition; hence all the responsibility and work involved could be
attributed to the two organizations in Korea. This draws a stark contrast to the case of Profusion of
Color, an exhibition at the Asian Art Museum San Francisco in 1995, which will be further discussed
later in this paper.
Despite the points made above, it should not be discounted that Korean Costumes and
Textiles was the first major appearance of bojagi in the United States as the main object of an
exhibition. Furthermore, the English source for the etymology, history, utility, and variety of bojagi
became available through the catalogue published in conjunction with the exhibition. Following the
two messages that open the catalogue, the overall historical background of Korean culture and the
overview of traditional Korean costumes, accessories, and wrapping cloths are provided by Yi Sŏng-
mi, who then was a professor and now is an Emerita of Art History at the Academy of Korean
Studies 한국학 중앙연구원. The catalogue also includes essays written in Korean that account for
traditional Korean costumes,
34
accessories,
35
and wrapping cloths
36
by authorities in each category
who were also the lenders of the exhibits. Although the English portion of the catalogue, written by
Yi and partially based on the Korean contributions of the three collectors, does not cover everything

33
Carol Vogel. “I.B.M. to Close Its Midtown Gallery.” New York Times, Mar. 23, 1993.
34
By Seok Juseon (1911 – 1996), a scholar of Korean costumes and the former director of the Seok Juseon
Memorial Folk Museum in Korea, which later became the Seok Juseon Memorial Museum of Dankook University,
now located in Jukjeon, Gyeonggi-do, Korea.
35
By Chang Sook-hwan, then a professor of Kyungwon University, currently a professor of Special
Appointment at the Clothing and Textiles Department, Ewha Womans University, Korea.
36
By Huh Donghwa.
18

that is discussed in the Korean portion, it still provides primary knowledge about bojagi.nd This
fairly short writing has been referenced by multiple publications on bojagi written in English.
37
The
catalogue also contains a description of each exhibit, including its materials and dimensions. While
there had previously been little writing focused on bojagi written in or translated into English,
Korean Costumes and Textiles provided an opportunity for bojagi to become a subject of study for
probably the first time in the United States. Moreover, the essays definitely acknowledge the artistic
value of the bojagi while its utilitarian aspect is still quite present in mentions of how bojagi are
consumed in modern day Korea: for example, to replace grocery bags and to give gifts for weddings.
Albeit briefly, they point out the aesthetic of bojagi and the “artistic sensibility of Korean women
who created them [bojagi].”
38

Since Korean Costumes and Textiles was not an exhibition invited or hosted by an
established art museum, it would be an exaggeration to see it as a definite incident that transformed
bojagi into a museum object. However, as it was the first occurrence of bojagi exhibition in the
United States and it let gallery visitors be exposed to the beauty of various kinds of bojagi, this
exhibition in 1992 could be seen as a prelude to the later exhibitions that featured these creative
works.

37
Some examples can be Splendor & Simplicity (1993), Profusion of Color (1995), Korea: Art and
Archaeology (2000).
38
Yi, Korean costumes and textiles, 16.
19

1.3. Profusion of Color, bojagi’s “leap” into museum exhibitions in the United States
Profusion of Color: Korean Costumes & Wrapping Cloths of the Chosŏn Dynasty
39
(Figure
7) opened at the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco
(henceforth, Asian Art Museum) on February 28,
1995. It was organized by the Asian Art Museum and
Museum of Korean Embroidery in Seoul with
support from various organizations including the
Ministry of Culture and Sports of Korea, KOIS, IBM
Korea, Inc. the Korea Foundation, and the National
Museum of Korea as well as the Koret Foundation
and Korean Art and Culture Committee of the Asian
Art Museum in the United States. Kumja Paik KIM,
the curator of Korean art at the Asian Art Museum,
who was appointed as the first curator of Korean art
at any public museum in the United States, curated
the exhibition in collaboration with Huh Donghwa of
the Museum of Korean Embroidery. Although the title refers to Korean costumes and wrapping
cloths, the exhibition featured many more bojagi as it featured 9 items (15 pieces) classified as
costumes and a total of 54 bojagi of different varieties. After two months of display at the Asian Art
Museum, then located in Golden Gate Park, the exhibition moved to the Seattle Art Museum, and the
Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts, then continued at the Royal Museum of

39
Profusion of Color: Korean Costumes & Wrapping Cloths of the Chosŏn Dynasty 한국의 색 was at the
Asian Art Museum (Feb. 28 – Apr. 30, 1995), Seattle Art Museum (Sep. 9, 1995 – Mar. 3, 1996), and Peabody
Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts (Apr. 25 – Jul 22, 1996), then traveled to the Royal Museum of Mariemont
in Belgium (Sep. 20 – Dec. 8, 1996). The literal translation of the Korean title, 한국의 색, would be “The Color of
Korea.”
Figure 7 Profusion of Color (1995), the poster
image and the cover of exhibition catalogue that
features mono-tone ramie jogakbo
20

Mariemont (Musée royal de Mariemont) in Belgium. Profusion of Color can be perceived as the first
instance in which bojagi became the main object of a museum exhibition in the United States.
Although Korean Costumes and Textiles introduced bojagi to an American audience previously,
Profusion of Color made the first bojagi exhibition in a museum proper, and it delved into the history
and aesthetic of bojagi more deeply, which was still novel.
The Asian Art Museum was the first U.S. museum to have an independent department of
Korean art and to appoint a curator of Korean art in 1989.
40
Having an expert on Korean art,
especially for an art museum dedicated to Asian art specifically, was long overdue, and when it
finally became realized, the Korean collection of the museum started to grow and special exhibitions
including Profusion of Color followed. Admittedly, Profusion of Color could only be actualized with
the financial and institutional assistance from multiple organizations and companies in Korea.
However, if it had not been for the recognition and initiative from the museum’s end, the exhibition
would not have been held at this scale. Profusion of Color also traveled to other influential
institutions like the Seattle Art Museum and Peabody Essex Museum. Though relatively smaller than
the other two, the Peabody Essex Museum has been a significant institution in terms of presenting
Korean culture as its Korean collection began as early as 1882.
41
According to a report included in a
publication by the Museum of Korean Embroidery, the total number of museum visitors during the
exhibition for each museum were 22,000 for the Asian Art Museum, 60,000 for the Seattle Art
Museum, and 50,000 for the Peabody Essex Museum.
42
As it attracted a number of visitors,
Profusion of Color was covered by multiple articles in local newspapers and art magazines, and

40
“A Growing Interest in an Ancient Asian Art,” New York Times (New York, NY), Dec. 25, 1989.
41
Some of the most memorable objects from the Korean collection of the Peabody Essex Museum include
a few items that originally belonged to YU Kil-chun, one of the first Koreans who encountered Western culture and
technology in the United States and stayed in Salem and Boston, MA, for about two years (1883 – 1885), first to
serve as a delegate of Joseon and later for his studies. To learn more about the intellectual encounters and friendship
between Yu and Edward S. Morse, then director of the Peabody Academy of Science, and how the Korean
collection started and grew at the Peabody Essex Museum, see The Korean Collection of the Peabody Essex
Museum (1999).
42
Hanguk Saekchaeui Hyangyeon, (Seoul: Sajeon Jasoo Bakmulgwan, 1997), 21-22.
21

exhibition reviews discussing the meaning and visuality of bojagi in depth were also published.
Compared to Korean Costumes and Textiles, Profusion of Color was a more full-fledged exhibition
of bojagi based on the caliber of planning and execution from the established museums hosting it
along with the support it received from Korea. It is significant also because it provided the
foundation of subsequent exhibitions on bojagi such as Wrapping of Happiness: A Traditional Art
Form at the Honolulu Academy of Arts in 2003.
Compared to Korean Costumes and Textiles, Profusion of Color brought bojagi more to the
center of the exhibition, and the history, symbolism, categories, and aesthetic of bojagi could be
explored in more depth. Besides some congratulatory messages, the exhibition catalogue, entirely
written in English, includes acknowledgements written by the curator, Kim, who accounts for how
the exhibition came about and emphasizes its significance. Instead of serving other causes—the
enhancement of diplomatic ties between two countries, for instance—the exhibition indeed focused
on bojagi and the culture around it. Kim first conceived the idea of an exhibition on Korean textiles
in 1990 when she first met Huh. Initially, it was an exhibition exclusively on bojagi, then the plan
changed slightly to encompass a few items of Korean costume,
43
but the majority of the exhibits were
still bojagi. The catalogue also features four essays not only on Korean costume and bojagi, but also
on the life of Korean women in the Joseon era and their art, which had not previously been widely
discussed in English. Yi Sŏng-mi gives an overview of the life and art of women in Korea and
discusses how some women still tried to fulfill their intellectual and artistic desires even as the social
status of women in Korea became more confined during the Joseon period. The artistic sensibility of
the unknown women who made beautiful bojagi under restrictive circumstances is recognized in her
essay.
44
Kim Kichung, then a professor of English at San Jose State University, introduces selected

43
Kim, and Huh. Profusion of Color, 8.
44
Sŏng-mi Yi, “Women in Korean History and Art” from Profusion of Color (1995), 10-16.
22

literary works produced by Joseon-era women, who were discouraged from studying or writing. In
addition to works by well-known female poets Sin Saimdang, Hwang Jini, and Heo Nanseolheon, the
contributions of unidentified artists to gyubanggasa 규방가사, songs circulated within women’s
quarters, are also analyzed with specific examples.
45
Kumja Paik Kim, the curator of the exhibition,
explains different types of Korean costumes and also how bojagi, romanized as pojagi then, can be
categorized based on user, material, design, and purpose. Each kind of bojagi is researched in depth
in relation to the corresponding examples from the plates included in the catalogue. Kim sees bojagi
as the “legacies of the creative unknown of Chosŏn dynasty women to the world.”
46
Lastly, Huh
Donghwa, the lender of all the bojagi exhibited, shares his recollection of his collection history under
the title “A Tribute to Unsung Artists.” He mentions that his museum is a tribute to the wisdom and
artistic ingenuity of the women who created the items in its collection.
47
Considering the paucity of
scholarly works, especially in English, on the life and art of women in the Joseon era, the inclusion of
these essays is valuable as they actually pay close attention not only to the visual quality of bojagi
but also the history, symbolism, and artistry of the makers of bojagi. The exhibition and catalogue
have been referenced by many sources, such as exhibition catalogues, collection catalogues, and
articles that discuss bojagi in English. Profusion of Color gave bojagi an opportunity to be
appreciated in an art museum, and it also started creating the narrative around bojagi in the context of
art in American museums.

45
Kichung Kim, “Chosŏn Dynasty Women Seen Through Their Own Eyes,” from Profusion of Color,
1995, 17- 24.
46
Kumja Paik Kim, “Profusion of Color: Korean Costumes and Wrapping Cloths of the Chosŏn Dynasty”
from Profusion of Color (1995), 25-33.
47
Dong-hwa Huh, “A Tribute to Unsung Artists” from Profusion of Color (1995), 34-36.
23

In conjunction with the exhibition, there were different programs
48
offered by the three
museums. The opening ceremony at the Asian Art Museum was attended by key figures who
contributed to the exhibition such as Huh, Susan Koret, Chairman of the Board of the Koret
Foundation, Lee Jung-Ha, the Korean Consul General, among many others. The museum organized
educational programs for visitors and members of the community. First, a series of lectures were held
to introduce the American audience to a variety of Korean cultural practices including Korean music
and dance. Also, a video presenting Korean culture—hanbok, holidays in Korea, traditional Korean
weddings and more—were screened throughout the exhibition. For educators, a large-scale workshop
was prepared that was attended by 104 teachers in the community, who learned about bojagi and
maedeup, the Korean art of braiding and knotting.
49
Regular visitors to the exhibition could join
docent-guided tours and listen to detailed information about the exhibits. Similarly, the Seattle Art
Museum hosted a lecture by Huh, and the Peabody Essex Museum had a lecture titled “Women &
Korean Art” given by Yi Sŏng-mi and Kumja Paik Kim. A week before the opening of its exhibition,
the Peabody Essex Museum also hosted a Korean dinner accompanied by a performance on the
gayageum 가야금, a traditional Korean string instrument that usually has 12 strings. Judging from
these events, it is clear that each museum, as an instrumental body of the organizing party, made a
significant effort and used its resources to enrich this exhibition. As with other special exhibitions,
the focus of this one, bojagi, became the subject of interest, and the events and catalogue described
above were prepared to help further the audiences’ understanding of it and the culture behind it.

48
The facts and promotional materials for the following programs are archived in Hanguk Saekchaeui
Hyangyeon (1997), which is the compilation of documents related to the exhibitions, such as invitation letters,
exhibition reviews, photographs of the exhibitions and events associated with them, and more, published by the
Museum of Korean Embroidery. This source is written in Korean and published only in Korea.
49
Maedeup consists of intricate knots and is often used to embellish traditional Korean ornaments such as
musical instruments, pockets, and norigae, a tasselled ornament that is worn with hanbok. (Beth McKillop, Korean
Art and Design, 146.)

24

Profusion of Color was more than a one-off temporary show as it became an inspiration for
future exhibitions on bojagi as well as the acquisition of bojagi, especially that of jogakbo by some
American museums in the 1990s. In a letter sent to Huh after the exhibition, the then director of the
Seattle Art Museum Mary Gardener Neil says, “The Seattle Art Museum has identified Korea a
priority in art acquisition, exhibition planning, and public programming. With a heightened
awareness of Korean textiles as a result of this recent experience, the museum acquired three more
pojagi for the collection.”
50
The three bojagi are all jogakbo patched with ramie gauze, and two of
them were displayed in a special exhibition, Luminous: The Art of Asia,
51
where the highlights of the
museum’s Asian art collection were showcased. For the Asian Art Museum, the catalogue for its
Korean collection states, “The striking beauty of the wrapping cloths (bojagi) included in this
exhibition [Profusion of Color] captivated our visitors. This exhibition thus became the catalyst for
the museum to begin collecting Korean patchwork and embroidered wrapping cloths.”
52
As will be
discussed later in this paper, the Asian Art Museum currently has 47 bojagi in its collection, and 41
of them were acquired after 1995. As these sources show, Profusion of Color, which shed new light
on bojagi, stimulated American museums to bring bojagi into their collections, which transformed
bojagi into a museum object in the United States.
This momentous exhibition offered the first opportunity for bojagi to be appreciated and
discussed like other artworks in museums. Visitors could learn about and experience not only the
beauty of bojagi, but also the life of Korean women in the Joseon era and their artistic sensibility,
and, more broadly, Korean art, which had not been well represented in American museums. As the

50
Hanguk Saekchaeui Hyangyeon, 75.
51
Luminous: The Art of Asia was at the Seattle Art Museum from Oct. 13, 2011 – Jan. 8, 2012. In addition
to the two ramie jogakbo displayed, a work commissioned for the exhibition, Gate by Do Ho Suh, was on view, and
this video work was projected onto the artist’s existing fabric piece. The connection between Suh’s work and
jogakbo was mentioned in the description of the purple ramie jogakbo; “Do Ho Suh borrow[s] some of the aesthetic
principles of this traditional Korean textile [jogakbo].” (art.seattleartmuseum.org/objects/20694)
52
Kim, The Art of Korea, 52.
25

main object of a special exhibition organized by a U.S. museum, bojagi was praised for its visuality
and, once a mundane object from Korea, became treated as representative of “The Color of Korea”
(the literal translation of the Korean title of the exhibition). Profusion of Color thus sparked bojagi
acquisition by American museums in the 1990s,
53
and the bojagi has become a museum object in the
United States. The exhibition also differentiated itself from many of the previous exhibitions on
Korean art in the United States since it demonstrated the “other side” of Korean art, the energy and
vitality presented through the vibrant color of bojagi, which had not been highlighted much before as
Korean art was often associated with simplicity and ruggedness up until then. Although Koreans
might have been referred to as the “people of white clothes”
54
once, Profusion of Color showed
American audiences that the horizon for Korean art could be broader.

Section 2. Bojagi collections in American museums
2.1. The “carrying cloth” of an American envoy in the late nineteenth century
While bojagi in American museums of today are treasured for their artistic value and the
creativity of their “unidentified artists,” the narrative around the first bojagi acquisition by a United
States museum is quite different. Based on the sources that are available, the first bojagi that became
a museum object in the United States was a printed bojagi acquired by the United States National
Museum, currently organized as the Smithsonian Institution, between 1883 and 1884. (Figure 8) It
was collected by John Baptiste Bernadou (1858 – 1908), a U.S. Navy ensign and an envoy of the

53
To learn more about bojagi collections in American museums, see 2.3 of this paper.
54
Kim, and Huh, Profusion of Color, 32.
26

United States National Museum, who was
sent to Korea in 1883 to collect various
objects that could inform the American
public about the lifestyle of this unknown
land called Joseon. The nineteenth century
was when archaeological and ethnographic
research into regions in and around the
Pacific Ocean that were “exotic” to the West
began to be conducted by Americans,
55
and
Bernadou’s ethnographic study of Korea in
the late nineteenth century can be understood within that context as well. As an amateur
ethnographer, Bernadou collected 153 items from March 1883 to April 1884, and the Bernadou
Collection was the first systematic attempt by the U.S. National Museum to collect ethnological
artifacts of Korea.
56
The Bernadou Collection is considered the most significant collection from the
late nineteenth century of Korean ethnographic material among the early Korean collections of the
Smithsonian, including the Allen Collection and the Jouy Collection.
57

Bernadou’s diplomatic mission to Korea was launched not long after 1882, the year of the
signing of the Treaty of Amity and Commerce between Joseon and the U.S. This time of the late
Joseon dynasty is often considered the “opening” of Korea, which started from the Japan–Korea
Treaty of 1876, which forced Korea to open more ports and allow Japan the freedom to conduct
commerce with Korea. The Treaty of Amity and Commerce between Joseon and the U.S. in 1882

55
Neil Asher Silberman, “Promised Lands and Chosen Peoples,” in Nationalism, Politics, and the Practice
of Archaeology, 1995, As cited in Pyun (2011), 248.
56
Hyup Choi, “Representing Korean Culture in America: A Case Study of the Korean Ethnological
Collections at the Smithsonian Institution,” Korea Journal, Autumn 1998: 210-227.
57
Chang-su Cho Houchins, An Ethnography of the Hermit Kingdom (Washington, D.C: Smithsonian
Institution, 2004), 16-17.
Figure 8 The Carrying Cloth (bojagi) currently housed at
the Smithsonian Institution
27

was the first treaty between Korea and a Western country, therefore the life of people in Korea, then
often referred to as the “Hermit Kingdom,” was mostly unknown to people in the United States. As a
means to help Americans to understand Korean life, Bernadou built a comprehensive collection of
everyday objects including ceramics, textiles, clothing, furniture, and more. Among the 153 items,
there are 20 items, such as paintings, woodcut prints, and drawings, that were presumably considered
as art by Bernadou’s contemporaries in Korea, but other than those, the collection mainly consists of
practical items that show signs of previous use. It seems that Bernadou understood the principle of
ethnography that was widely believed at that time, which required systematic collection, including
categorization and documentation of information for each item.
58
Based on the aim and the method of
his research, it can be assumed that Bernadou selected items based on how they were actually used in
people’s mundane life, with help from his local informants. To make his collection more complete,
he even asked for an extension for his stay in Korea. The single bojagi in the collection, initially
marked as “carrying cloth,” could have also been chosen for its usage, which he may have noticed
during his limited observations in Korea.
Aside from the notes of Bernadou himself, the Bernadou Collection has been compiled by
two different publications so far, and the way in which the bojagi is illustrated in each source needs
to be closely read. The Bernadou, Allen, and Jouy Korean Collections in the United States National
Museum was published in 1891 by Walter Hough, then the Smithsonian curator, as a part of the
annual report of the U.S. National Museum, and it gives an extensive list of the objects from Korea
amassed by the early collectors of the Smithsonian Institution. In this publication, the description of
the bojagi is quite concise and it reads as below.
Carrying Cloth. Square piece of coarse cotton stuff stamped in black. At each corner
is sewn a strong band of folded cotton.
Size, 48 by 55 inches square.

58
Houchins, An Ethnography of the Hermit Kingdom, 7.
28

Seoul, Korea.
Collected by Ensign J. B. Bernadou, U.S. Navy.
Wrapped around parcels carried by porters.
59

The circumstances of its acquisition can be inferred based on the last line of the description, and it
becomes more obvious that the bojagi was chosen to be part of the collection because it showed how
ordinary Korean people would carry things around. Although Hough (1891) gives the romanized
names for some items provided by Bernadou with the Korean language skills he acquired, this item is
not identified as a bojagi or any other iteration of it, but just a carrying cloth. The entry name itself is
derived from the function of the object, which is carrying, although it is possible that the bojagi was
multifunctional. Furthermore, this item appears in the category of “Property, Trade, Commerce, and
Intercommunication” under “Social Relations and Public Welfare.”
60
As the names of the category
and subcategory suggest, the criteria for classification was primarily based on the function of each
object, which seems reasonable considering the initial purpose of the collection, and which resulted
in the shape or pattern of the bojagi receiving less attention, naturally.
Another publication from the Smithsonian in 2004 covers the Bernadou Collection in much
more depth. Chang-su Cho Houchins at the Asian Cultural History Program of the Smithsonian
Institution rediscovered the value of the Bernadou Collection and completed thorough research on it,
including her field research in Korea in 1987 and 1988. In this publication titled An Ethnography of
the Hermit Kingdom, Houchins examines every object in the collection. Her research provides basic
information on each item such as the estimated time and place of its production, its dimensions, and
its reference number in the original collection, as well as its Korean name both in the actual Korean
language and its romanized equivalent. As a proper catalogue, Houchin’s Ethnography explains each
object in detail in addition to including the original remarks left by Bernadou or Hough. The bojagi is

59
Walter Hough, “The Bernadou, Allen, and Jouy Korean Collections in the U.S. National Museum,” In
Report of the U.S. National Museum for the Year ending June 30, 1891, 429-488. (Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian
Institution Press, 1891), 476.
60
Hough, “The Bernadou, Allen, and Jouy Korean Collections in the U.S. National Museum,” 476.
29

finally identified as a bojagi even as it is accompanied here by its English name, Wrapping Cloth,
although there is no photograph of it. After a brief description of the item, the Ethnography gives the
definition of bojagi while referencing Huh’s works and mainly discusses the different functions of
bojagi as compared to those of the Japanese wrapping cloth, furoshiki ふろしき or the Okinawan
uchikui うちくい. The entry does not miss mentioning that it is patchwork bojagi that are often seen
and how this decorative component can be varied. This is mentioned even though the information
does not apply to the item itself, but more to the items that later became part of the museum
collection, chiefly since the 1990s, which will be discussed later in this paper. Interestingly, the
bojagi is classified as Miscellany in this catalogue with other items such as Janggi 장기, Korean
Chess, and Geomungo 거문고, a traditional Korean musical instrument with six strings. It is not
certain whether this decision was made because of the lack of items in the collection that are similar
to bojagi, but it is worth noting that the bojagi is not presented with the hanbok and other colorful
accessories in the collection, which are covered by the respective category Clothing and Accessories.
Unlike in the exhibitions Korean Costume and Textiles and Profusion in Color, the bojagi is merely
seen as a mundane object and receives less attention for its appearance, with no photograph to show
what kind of visual quality it has. A possible reason for this may be attributed to the goal of the
collection, which was to build an encyclopedic knowledge of Korean life. Because the role it plays in
people’s lives is what mattered to the collection, it was not jogakbo, a colorful example that could be
visually appealing to people of today, but this worn-out bojagi that had to be classified under
Miscellany.
30

Based on the recent photographs of the item,
61
this
tan-colored bojagi is made of four strips of cotton fabric
that are sewn together to make a relatively large bojagi
measuring 48 inches by 54 inches (122 cm by 138 cm).
62

Three long and narrow straps are sewn to three out of four
corners to let its user wrap and fold an object inside by
tying the straps together.
63
The color of this item can be
described as tan or khaki although it is plausible that its
color was different from what is seen today because the
original hue has faded over time. There is no trace of either embroidery or patchwork, but patterns of
dragons and butterflies are printed across the surface although they are quite faded (Figure 9). It takes
extra attention to recognize now because of the faded print, but Houchins (2004) mentions that the
patterns include the ideographs su 壽 (long life) and bok 福 (blessings)
64
as well. The estimated
time and place of production is the late nineteenth century during the Joseon era, and understandably,
the maker is not identified. As shown above, some of the characteristics of this bojagi and its
collection history are in stark contrast to those of jogakbo collections that are currently housed by
various museums in the United States. First, it is not a work of patchwork or embroidery, but a
printed cloth made of coarse cotton, which was presumably chosen for its utility, not for its formal
quality. Secondly, it shows significant signs of use before having been acquired by Bernadou

61
The author wants to express her gratitude to Carrie Beauchamp, the Museum Specialist and Collection
Data Manager of the Department of Anthropology at the Smithsonian Institution, for taking her time to go into
storage and take pictures of the museum’s bojagi for this research. Also, her detailed description of the object and
discussion of the purpose of the early collection of the Smithsonian have been extremely helpful for the
development of this part of the paper.
62
Houchins, An Ethnography of the Hermit Kingdom, 132.
63
Although the publication in 2004 states that there are four “tying ribbons sewn on to each of its four
corners,” this piece currently has three straps, judging from the pictures and description by Carrie Beauchamp. Since
it looks used and worn out, it is possible that one of the straps fell off at some point.
64
Houchins, An Ethnography of the Hermit, 132.
Figure 9 Detailed shot of the Smithsonian
bojagi with its faded pattern
31

whereas many jogakbo in modern museum collections have rarely been used and are well preserved.
Lastly, the way it is illustrated in the publications mentioned above pays far less attention to its
physical shape and the image it creates. It might come across as less attractive to museum visitors of
today, but since this bojagi was true to its role of wrapping and carrying, it could have seemed
worthy of preservation to Bernadou’s eyes, hence its incorporation into the collection of the
Smithsonian Institution.
Through this ethnographic research of newly exposed land, the United States National
Museum aimed to understand pre-industrial Korean life, and this bojagi marked as “carrying cloth”
was one of the 153 items that were meant to help to reach this goal. In this context, bojagi was
perceived as a functional object that performs its role in the everyday life of the Korean people; for
this reason, it did not have to be a decorative jogakbo, but this rather plain bojagi that was taken to
the United States.

2.2. The introduction of Korean art in the United States and the absence and emergence
of bojagi in the process
In a similar manner, from the late nineteenth century to the twentieth century, everyday
objects commonly used in Korea became subjects of collection for Westerners who were visiting or
stationed in Korea.
65
These objects include paintings and items “used by ordinary people and
associated with folk customs and folk beliefs.”
66
Meticulously made jogakbo were one of the items
that attracted the eyes of these outsiders, and some jogakbo that can be seen in American museums
nowadays are the result of this collecting activity. However, jogakbo or any other kind of bojagi had

65
Jane Portal, Korea: Art and Archaeology (New York: Thames & Hudson, 2000), 143.
66
Jane Portal, Hee Jung Lee, and Suhyung Kim. Arts of Korea (Boston: MFA Publications, 2012), 101.
32

rarely been seen in a museum setting in the United States for almost a century since the first bojagi
acquisition by the Smithsonian Institution. A few survey exhibitions of Korean art were held and
traveled in the United States in the 1950s and 1970s, but the jogakbo was not part of them.
Before discussing the absence of bojagi from the introduction of Korean art to the United
States, it should be mentioned that Korean art as a whole had remained mostly unfamiliar to the West
for a long time. The history of exhibiting Korean artifacts before the eyes of foreigners goes back to
Korea’s first participation in an international fair, the Foreign Exhibition in Boston in 1883.
67

According to Charlotte Horlyck’s research, Korea’s presence at the fair seems to have been minimal
as it was not even marked on the exhibition map and the catalogue does not offer much information
about the Korean display.
68
The next international fair at which Korea appeared was the World’s
Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893. To redress its reputation as an isolated and unmodern
nation and establish Korea as an independent entity, Gojong
69
agreed to fund the Korean pavilion and
expected it to bring benefits in terms of diplomacy, commerce, and more. However, the display of
various objects of contemporary Korea was met with disdain. At that time, Korea was known, to
those who had at least heard of Korea, as “lacking in both arts and local produce.”
70
A historian and
ethnologist, Hubert Howe Bancroft described the Korean pavilion as “the customs and industries of
this strange and isolated nation.”
71
Interestingly, the objects displayed include what could be
displayed and praised for their beauty in today’s museums—silk garments and embroidered
screens—but at that time, they were seen as no more than random things from the “Hermit

67
Charlotte Horlyck, Korean Art: From the 19th Century to the Present (London: Reaktion Books, 2017),
22.
68
Horlyck, Korean Art, 23.
69
Gojong was the last king of Joseon and the first emperor of the Empire of Korea. He ascended the throne
in 1863 and reigned until the Japanese annexation of Korea in 1910.
70
Horlyck, Korean Art, 25.
71
Hubert Howe Bancroft, The Book of the Fair, an Historical and Descriptive Presentation of the World’s
Science, Art and Industry, as Viewed through the Columbian Exposition at Chicago in 1893, 1893, 179, as cited in
Horlyck, Korean Art, 25.
33

Kingdom.” The third appearance, on the other hand, received favorable reviews, and the Korean
pavilion at the Universal Exposition of 1900 in Paris was deemed a success.
72
However, it became
the last international fair in which Korea presented itself as a sovereign nation before Japan’s
annexation of Korea in 1910. In 1910, the Korean Pavilion was installed in the Japan-British
Exhibition, but it mainly focused on showing how Japan was “advancing” Korea with modern
technology and administrative systems.
73
Unfortunately enough, Korean art or any part of Korean
culture did not receive much attention from the West when the country itself was known as isolated
by the international community and soon became taken over by another country.
Even after Korea became independent from Japan in 1945, Korean art was not only less
represented in the United States compared to Western art, but also ignored even in the discussion of
East Asian art. Compared to that of China or Japan, Korean art was often overlooked and even
wrongfully viewed as “a mere imitation of its two neighbors.”
74
This interpretation can be observed
in some academic publications like History of Far Eastern Art (1964) by Sherman Lee. In “Korea’s
Search for a Place in Global Art History” (2016), Kim Youngna points out how Korean art had been
overshadowed by Chinese art and Japanese art in the context of art history. With the representative
title “History of Far Easter Art,” the first edition of Lee’s publication features only 8 items originated
from Korea, and the number increased by just 9 by the fifth edition in 1994, which in contrast covers
about 240 objects from Japan.
75
The paucity of Korean objects in Lee or the overall lack of
understanding of Korean art in the United States at this period should not be solely attributed to lack
of interest from the American audience though. As Kim mentions,
76
Korea went through major

72
Horlyck, Korean Art, 29.
73
Horlyck, Korean Art, 30.
74
Gwin Chin, “Savoring the Distinctiveness of Korean Art,” New York Times, Nov. 8, 1987.
75
Youngna Kim, “Korea's Search for a Place in Global Art History,” The Art Bulletin 98:1, (Mar. 2016): 7-
13, 7.
76
Youngana Kim, “Korea’s Search for a Place in Global Art History,” 7.
34

hardships in history, including Japanese colonization and the Korean War, which possibly interrupted
the study of Korean art and connoisseurship related to Korean art both within and outside Korea.
77

To overcome these obstacles and step outside the shadow of Korea’s historical hardships,
there had been major attempts after the Korean War to inform the American audience of what
Korean art is through large-scale survey exhibitions such as Masterpieces of Korean Art
78
in the
1950s and Treasures from Korea: Art through 5000 Years
79
from the late 1970s to the early 1980s.
Those exhibitions were organized and subsidized by the Korean government and the National
Museum of Korea to promote understanding of Korean art, which had been considered less explored
in the United States.
Even when Korean art started to be introduced to the United States through momentous
traveling exhibitions, jogakbo could not find its place among the objects that were chosen to
represent Korean art. In the early to mid-twentieth century, exhibitions like Chinese, Corean and
Japanese Potteries in 1914, by the Japan Society, New York, and The Charles B. Hoyt Collection,
Memorial Exhibition at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, in 1952, partially introduced Korean art to
American audiences, but all the objects featured were exclusively ceramics and were lent from a few

77
Although the number has grown compared to the past, even today, only a few major universities in the
United States have a faculty member who specializes in Korean art. While not an extensive list, among the scholars
of Korean art are: Joan Kee, Associate Professor at the University of Michigan, Sunglim Kim, Associate Professor
at Dartmouth College, Suzie Kim, Assistant Professor at the University of Mary Washington, Sohl Lee, Assistant
Professor at Stonybrook University, Eunyoung Park, Assistant Professor at Case Western Reserve University, J.P.
Park at the University of California, Riverside, and Maya Stiller, Assistant Professor at the University of Kansas as
of July 2019.
78
Masterpieces of Korean Art 한국미술 명품전 was at the National Gallery of Art, Metropolitan Museum
of Art, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Seattle Art Museum, Minneapolis Institute of Arts, California Palace of the
Legion of Honor, Los Angeles County Museum, and Honolulu Academy of Arts from 1957 to 1959. It also toured
Europe afterwards.
79
Treasures from Korea: Art through 5000 Years 한국미술 5 천년전 was at the Asian Art Museum,
Seattle Art Museum, Art Institute of Chicago, Cleveland Museum of Art, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston,
Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the William Rockhill Nelson Gallery of the Art-Atkins Museum of Fine Arts,
Kansas City (currently, the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art) from 1979 to 1981.
35

American private collectors including Charles Lang Freer,
80
which confined the scope of the
exhibitions significantly. In 1957, Masterpieces of Korean Art became the first exhibition that
offered a more comprehensive approach to Korean art with massive support from Korea. It was
organized by the Korean government and the National Museum of Korea and all the objects were
transported from Korea by the United States Navy.
81
Most of them were from the collections of the
National Museum of Korea and Duksoo Palace Museum of Fine Arts, and some paintings and
ceramics were lent from private collections.
82
The exhibition featured 187 pieces from Korea
including golden accessories from the Silla dynasty (57 BC – 668 AD) during the Three Kingdoms
period, celadons from the Goryeo dynasty, paintings from the Joseon dynasty, and more. Among the
187 pieces, more than half of them were ceramics as there were 77 Goryeo ceramics and 20 Joseon
ceramics. This disproportion becomes more understandable if the fact that the exhibition was curated
“with a Western audience in mind”
83
is taken into consideration since Goryeo and Joseon ceramics
had attracted Westerners even before the 1950s as mentioned above. For Treasures from Korea: Art
through 5000 Years, which traveled to different institutions in the United States from 1979 to 1981,
the selection of objects became more diverse in terms of period and material as it included 34 items
of metalworks and 22 ceramics from Three Kingdoms period, as well as 55 Joseon paintings.
84

However, neither exhibition shed light on jogakbo, or other everyday objects that were later deemed
as folk art or craft. As those government-supported exhibitions aimed attention at presenting
ceramics that had been sought after prior to Korea’s proactive introduction of them to Western
audiences and other paintings and statues that had been historically appreciated as art in Korea, it

80
J. Keith Wilson, “Korean Art Exhibitions in the United States,” Exhibiting Korean Art: Proceedings of
the 2006 International Symposium of Korean art (Seoul: National Museum of Korea, 2007), 249-250.
81
Masterpieces of Korean Art (Seoul, Washington: Ministry of Culture and Information of Korea, 1957),
13.
82
These were the private collections of SOHN Jai Hyung, CHUN Hyung Pil, and the Christian Museum,
Seoul, respectively.
83
Christine Y. Hahn, “Unearthing Origins: The Use of Art, Archaeology, and Exhibitions in Creating
Korean National Identity, 1945–1962,” Visual Resources 28, no. 2 (Jun. 1, 2012): 138–170.
84
Wilson, “Korean Art Exhibitions in the United States,” 257-258.
36

took a few more decades for jogakbo to be included in the realm of Korean art when Korean art was
presented in the United States.
One of the possible reasons for jogakbo being excluded from these exhibitions and hence
remaining absent from the U.S. museum scene until the 1990s, is the fact that jogakbo had been
perceived as neither art nor something “presentable” within Korea until recently. As mentioned
earlier, jogakbo were made exclusively by women of the commoner class, and under the heavy
influence of Neo-Confucianism, the place of women was very restricted in the Joseon era both
conceptually and physically. Unlike women in the Goryeo era,
85
Joseon-era women lost their
economic independence upon marrying into their husband’s family to become a part of that lineage.
86

Considering these suppressive social circumstances, it is no surprise that wrapping cloths made by
females of the household were not appreciated as much as they are today. Granted, many jogakbo
were cherished and preserved, especially when they were created and used for special occasions such
as weddings, and many of them have never been used,
87
but those were kept as more as personal
souvenirs, and this practice of treasuring jogakbo did not reach the point where these items were
considered worthy of collecting.
88
For this reason, there could not have been any substantial jogakbo
collections built indigenously in Korea until Huh initiated his collection in the 1960s; hence jogakbo,

85
Martina Deuchler, “Propagating Female Virtues in Chosŏn Korea,” in Women and Confucian Cultures in
Premodern China, Korea, and Japan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003), 143.
86
Burglind Jungmann, Pathways to Korean Culture: Paintings of the Joseon Dynasty, 1392-1910.
(London: Reaktion Books, 2014), 50.
87
Donghwa Huh, Uriga jeongmal araya hal uri gyubang munhwa [What we really need to know about
gyubang culture]. (Seoul: Hyunamsa, 1997), 290.
88
The vogue of collecting did exist in the late Joseon period, though. Yangban 양반, the ruling class, and
the financially emerging jungin 중인, the upper middle class with technical or administrative skills, and even some
wealthy commoners sought to collect luxury goods including paintings, books, ceramics, and some scholarly objects
displaying their fine taste. For an extended discussion, see Chang, Chin-Sung, “Ambivalence and Indulgence: The
Moral Geography of Collectors in Late Joseon Korea,” Archaism and Antiquarianism in Korean and Japanese Art,
2013.
37

among other objects deemed “less than art” in Korea, could not possibly be chosen to be part of the
emblematic exhibitions described earlier.
This tendency by museums to overlook female quarters and the objects used by females
89
is
also found in how the National Museum of Korea was laid out in the 1980s. An English catalogue of
the National Museum of Korea was published in Seoul in 1988, the year of the Seoul Olympics. It
elaborates the history of the museum and the origin of Korean culture and then and introduces
selected galleries of the museum, which are categorized mostly based on the period and material. For
example, in its presentation of Goryeo celadon, the catalogue provides background information such
as the origin of Goryeo celadon, the unique inlaying techniques used, and the rise and fall of this art
form across history.
90
Such explanations along with color photographs of the objects could offer a
good introduction to Korean culture for those who might not be familiar with it. Considering all the
new visitors to Seoul around the time of the Olympics, this English catalogue could have been
conceived and designed with the specific purpose of introducing the quintessential Korean arts in
mind. Interestingly, one of the galleries in the museum as well as one of the entries covered in the
catalogue is Sarangbang 사랑방, men’s quarters used by the head
91
of the household as a study,
guest room, and library, which takes up a whole gallery close to the gallery for white porcelain from
the Joseon era.
92
The reproduced sarangbang on the third floor of the museum exhibits objects that
could be used by men in this physical context, such as stationery items, a reading and writing table, a
document chest, and works of calligraphy and painting. Although the description of sarangbang in

89
This is not to say that this characteristic is uniquely attributed to Korean society by any means. To
explore how women dealt with social pressure through art making, collection, and cooking in England and in some
other regions in the West from 1750 to 1950, see Goggin, Maureen Daly, and Beth Fowkes Tobin, eds. Women and
Things, 1750-1950, 2009.
90
National Museum of Korea. (Seoul, Korea: National Museum of Korea, 1988), 94.
91
The source originally uses the term “master of the house” instead of “the head of the house,” but the
author decided to change it due to concerns related to the connotation that the word “master” has for some readers.
That said, “the head of the house” does not clearly convey what needs to be conveyed either.
92
National Museum of Korea. (Seoul, Korea: National Museum of Korea, 1988), 126.
38

the publication briefly mentions anbang 안방 as the women’s quarters, it does not discuss this
further other than describing its location in the house relative to the location of sarangbang.
93
As the
space for men and women were separated and the presence and social roles of women were confined,
there were things that women were not allowed to do and places they could not enter.
94
Likewise, in
the 1980s, in this iconic space called the National Museum of Korea, jogakbo or any other objects
produced or used by women were completely obliterated,
95
not to mention the fact that all the
paintings and calligraphy in the catalogue for which the artist was identified were created by men.
This partially explains the absence of jogakbo in United States museums for the hundred years
between the time of Bernadou's mission and that of bojagi's entrance into multiple American
museums. Since it was not considered an object that demonstrates the quintessence of Korean art
within Korea, it is likely that jogakbo could not make the list of items selected as representative for
the traveling exhibitions across the Pacific. Due to the historical baggage of male-dominated society,
jogakbo could not step into the sphere of Korean art on the Korean end, at least not yet.

While Masterpieces of Korean Art and Treasures from Korea: Art through 5000 Years
mainly presented ceramics and paintings, the exhibition held in 1983
96
(Figure 10) newly brought
attention to Korean folk paintings and other objects related to Korean folk customs, such as chests,

93
“A typical Korean house is made up of inner and outer rooms. The inner rooms or anbang were the
women’s quarters and the other rooms were the sarangbang. (National Museum of Korea (1988), 126)
94
Jungmann, Pathways to Korean Culture, 50.
95
This is no longer the case in the National Museum of Korea today. The objects that used to be displayed
in sarangbang are now part of the Wood and Lacquer Crafts gallery on the second floor of the museum, which is
now located in Yongsan, Seoul, since the opening of the new building in 2005. Besides sarangbang, anbang
including the furniture for the room, is also introduced in the gallery and collection catalogue as “Lady’s room.” To
see the change, see National Museum of Korea, 2007, along with the earlier print catalogue of 1988.
96
Auspicious Sprits: Korean Folk Paintings and Related Objects was at Asia Society Gallery, Asian Art
Museum of San Francisco in 1983.
39

wedding ducks, writing tools, and more. No bojagi were
included here but it is significant that the exhibition
widened the scope of Korean art as it recognized the
artistic value of mundane items. Lea Sneider,
97
whose
name reappears later in this paper, co-curated the
exhibition as Guest Director with Robert Moes, the then
Curator for Oriental Art at the Brooklyn Museum. She
believed that Korean folk tradition would “strongly
appeal to Western eye”
98
and tried to shed light on it
through the exhibition. In the preface of the exhibition
catalogue, Sneider gives credit to Zozayong
99
(1926 -
2000) for “infecting” her with his enthusiasm for Korean folk art.
100
Zozayong was a scholar who did
extensive research on Korean folk traditions and made a massive contribution to introducing Korean
folk painting and objects associated with Korean folk traditions within the context of art, even
outside Korea with his voluminous works in English. Auspicious Spirits: Korean Folk Paintings and
Related Objects was the first exhibition that provided an opportunity for Korean folk art to be
appreciated and studied in the United States. Following the preface by Sneider, Robert Moes
contributes his scholarly catalogue text, which helps to promote understanding of the symbolism,
history, and the usage of the exhibited objects. Even though this exhibition did not feature any
jogakbo, the fact that it cleared a passage for everyday objects to be presented in a museum could be
seen as an auspicious sign for jogakbo’s integration into American museums.

97
See 2.3 to find out more about her time in Korea and her interest in Korean art.
98
Robert Moes. Auspicious Spirits: Korean Folk Paintings and Related Objects (Washington, D.C:
International Exhibitions Foundation, 1983), 9.
99
His name is also romanized as Cho Cha-yong, but this paper follows how Zo addressed himself.
100
Moes. Auspicious Spirits, 10.
Figure 10 The cover image of the exhibition
catalogue of Auspicious Spirits (1983)
40

The inclusion of folk painting and related objects into the realm of Korean art in the 1980s in
the United States can also be seen in the example of another exhibition, From the Land of the
Morning Calm: Korean Art at the Brooklyn Museum.
101
(Figure 11) As a museum that opened its
Korean Gallery as early as 1974, the Brooklyn Museum of Art boasted a wide variety of items in its
Korean art collection. Since the opening of the Korean Gallery, which settled in the transformed
space of what used to be one quarter of the Japanese Gallery,
102
Robert Moes had shed light on the
museum’s Korean collection which had not been available for public viewing for decades, and this
exhibition, opened in 1987, could be seen as an illustration of the museum’s ongoing commitment to
represent the richness of Korean art. Many of the items featured in From the Land of Morning Calm
were acquired in the 1970s and 1980s, when the museum systematically collected Korean works of
art through donation and purchase.
103
The
exhibition also featured some objects from a
museum expedition in 1913,
104
when the
scope of the museum’s collection was
broader and included science and history
along with art.
105
In addition to the ceramics
and religious paintings and statues, the
exhibits included utilitarian items with
decorative elements; screen paintings such as

101
From the Land of the Morning Calm: Korean Art at the Brooklyn Museum was on view from October
16, 1987 to January 4, 1988, in the Robert E. Blum Gallery, Brooklyn Museum of Art.
102
Robert Moes, Korean Art: from the Brooklyn Museum Collection (New York: Universe Books, 1987),
preface.
103
Robert Moes, Korean Art, preface.
104
The expedition was conducted by Stewart Culin, the former Curator of Ethnology of the museum.
105
Later around 1930, the decision was made to make the museum an art museum and the collections less
related to the new mission were transferred to the American Museum of Natural History. (Korean Art (1987))
Figure 11 The installation view of From the Land of
Morning Calm: Korean Art at the Brooklyn Museum
(1987)
(https://www.brooklynmuseum.org/opencollection/exhibit
ions/717, accessed Aug. 10, 2019)
41

chaekgeori 책거리,
106
which feature books and associated objects, a water dropper in the shape of a
peach, as well as Korean furniture such as chests in different styles and a jewelry box inlaid with
mother-of-pearl, all of which were rarely seen outside Korea at that time.
107
In the exhibition
catalogue, Moes states that “The qualities that make Yi art
108
so aesthetically satisfying and unique
are to be found in its folk art rather than its court or scholarly art.”
109
Although it is not clear what his
assessment of satisfaction or uniqueness was based on, the exhibition did contribute to revealing a
less explored part of Korean art. Admittedly, Korean folk art in the exhibition was interpreted largely
based on a limited vocabulary, including directness, ruggedness, and unpretentiousness, and those
qualities were associated with the characteristics of Korean people at the same time, which certainly
is a generalization and hence can be quite problematic. However, this exhibition still remains an
important case of introducing Korean art, as it acknowledged the rich diversity of this art and
highlighted the artistic expression of Korean folk art, which had barely been explored in the United
States until then.
110

106
Chaekgeori was thoroughly explored through the exhibition, Chaekgeori: The Power and Pleasure of
Painted Screens, which was presented at the Charles B. Wang Center, Stony Brook University (Sep. 29 – Dec. 23,
2016), Spencer Museum of Art, The University of Kansas (Apr. 15 – Jun. 11, 2017), and the Cleveland Museum of
Art (Aug. 5 – Nov. 5, 2017). For the images and scholarly discussion, see the exhibition catalogue, Chaekgeori: The
Power and Pleasure of Possessions in Korean Painted Screens (2017) by CHUNG Byungmo and KIM Sunglim.
107
It seems that Korean folk art was overshadowed by the ceramics that became popular earlier among
Japanese and Westerners. Later, Korean folk art became integrated in the discussion of Korean art.
108
Here and throughout this publication, the Joseon dynasty is referred to as the Yi Dynasty, which now is
seen as archaic and colonial. The term gained currency after the Japanese colonization of Korea and inevitably gives
off an air of condescension because it uses the name of the royal house instead of the proper name of the realm,
when in fact the very royal house ruled the country for over five hundred years. In “Objects of Desire: Japanese
Collectors and Colonial Korea,” Kim Brandt discusses this further. Nowadays, it is hard to find any publication
using this term, but until the 1990s, it was rather commonly used. Even the publications for Masterpieces of Korean
Art or Treasures from Korea adapt the term despite the fact that the exhibitions were organized on the Korean end.
109
Moes, Korean Art, 20.
110
Later, Korean folk painting was in the spotlight once again when the exhibition, Hopes and Aspirations:
Decorative Painting of Korea 희망과 염원: 한국의 채색화 was held at the Asian Art Museum from February 14
to May 10, 1998. The exhibition paid a great amount of attention to folk paintings even as it also showed that
painting in bright colors could be found from all segments of Korean society—not only the world of commoners but
also that of religions and the court—in order to correct the previously held confusion that lumped all Korean
paintings in bright colors under the category of Korean folk painting. Chaesaekhwa, which literally means paintings
in colors, is translated as “decorative painting” for the exhibition title and chaesaekhwa and decorative painting are
interchangeably used in the essays in the catalogue. See Kumja Paik Kim, Hopes and Aspriations, 1998.
42

In 1994, the point finally came where jogakbo were included in an exhibition that
exclusively dealt with Korean art. Korean Arts of the Eighteenth Century: Splendor & Simplicity
111

was another exhibition organized in collaboration with the National Museum of Korea and three
jogakbo from Huh’s collection were displayed in the exhibition among other everyday objects, such
as different kinds of writing accoutrements, furniture, ritual wares, and more. Unlike Auspicious
Spirits or From the Land of the Morning Calm, Splendor & Simplicity was mainly organized and
supported by Korean institutions, and most of the exhibits were transported from Korea as with
Masterpieces of Korean Art and Treasures from Korea. In terms of both the variety and number of
objects, this exhibition introduced much more to the American audience than the previous two
exhibitions did. Three bojagi from the Huh Collection were included in the exhibition; these were
monotone jogakbo with reinforced corners having a darker shade of color. The exhibition
concentrated on the art of Korea in the eighteenth century, an era deemed one of peace and
prosperity, and the exhibition attempts to show the enriched culture of the time by showing works not
only by members of the court but also by yangban and the newly emerging jungin.
112
As its title
highlights by naming two seemingly disparate qualities, Splendor & Simplicity demonstrated various
aspects of Korean art beyond the simple and modest beauty of Goryeo celadon or Joseon white
porcelain, which had previously represented Korean art within and outside Korea, often limiting the
image associated with Korean art. This long-held image of Korean culture is often attributed to
Yanagi Soetsu 柳宗悦 (also known as Yanagi Muneyoshi, 1889-1961), the founder of the mingei 民
藝 (folk craft) movement in the 1920s. Although he was instrumental in the establishment of the
Korean Folk Crafts Museum and was even deemed an advocate of Korean art against Japanese

111
Korean Arts of the Eighteenth Century: Splendor & Simplicity 18 세기 조선의 미술: 우아함과
간결함 was at The Asia Society Galleries, New York, The Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, and
Los Angeles County Museum of Art from 1993 to 1994.
112
Hongnam Kim, Korean Arts of the Eighteenth Century: Splendor & Simplicity (New York: Weatherhill,
1993), 11.
43

colonial rule by some,
113
Yanagi’s view of Korean folk art has often been challenged for its
condescending and colonial perspective.
114
He called the beauty of Korean folk art hiai no bi 悲哀の
美 (beauty of sorrow), and the somber color and rather simple shape of Korean ceramics were
praised in relation to the “sadness” of the Korean people. This interpretation long lingered on the
image of Korean art. Splendor & Simplicity attempted to offer much more than the “rugged” and
“sad” beauty of Korea; dozens of pieces of folk art were brought for the exhibition, and their
vibrancy and splendor were emphasized. To demonstrate both the “splendor” and “simplicity” of
Korean art from various social strata, jogakbo must have been a suitable example as it could suggest
multiple aspects of Korean art that had previously not been extensively illustrated. The fact that
jogakbo were made by women, exclusively by anonymous women of the commoner class, and
display bright colors in a simpler form realized by this underrepresented group made jogakbo “a
striking example”
115
of splendor and simplicity. Besides the fact that jogakbo became part of a large-
scale exhibition of Korean art, Splendor & Simplicity was a significant incident for jogakbo’s
introduction in the United States as it motivated different avenues of scholarly research into jogakbo
and Korean art.
As artworks by commoners of the Joseon era and other common but aesthetically appreciated
objects began to attract more attention and related exhibitions were well-received, a pathway for
jogakbo to enter the domain of Korean art in the United States started to come into sight. Moreover,
after Profusion of Color helped the American audience recognize the artistic value of jogakbo, the
entry of jogakbo into museum collections in the United States was facilitated, which accordingly
created more opportunity for it to be displayed in museum galleries and enjoyed by more people.

113
Kim Brandt, Kingdom of Beauty: Mingei and the Politics of Folk Art in Imperial Japan (Durham: Duke
University Press, 2007), 9.
114
Jane Portal, Korea: Art and Archaeology, 143.
115
Hongnam Kim, Splendor & Simplicity, 32.
44

2.3. Bojagi collections in American museums in the late twentieth and early twenty-first
centuries
Among all the items that were illuminated at a relatively later date, compared to items like
ceramics or religious statues that have been sought after by collectors overseas for more than a
century, jogakbo has a strong presence in the American museums of today. Profusion of Color and
the positive reception to its exhibition led the Asian Art Museum to add more jogakbo to their
collection,
116
and now there are 47 bojagi with 43 jogakbo among them. Since the 1990s, more
bojagi have been brought into U.S. museum collections and jogakbo compose most of these. Table 1
below gives detailed information to support this observation.

[Table 1] Bojagi collections in selected American museums (as of May 2019, a total of 21
museums in order of the largest number of bojagi)
117

118

Name of
Museum
Number
of bojagi
(jogakbo)
Production
Time
(Number)
Accession
Year
(Number)
Credit Line including
Provenance, if available
(Number)
Marked as
&
Remarks
Asian Art
Museum San
Francisco

47 (43) 1800 – 1900
(3)
ca. 1990 (3)
1850 – 1900
(3)
1900 – 2000
(8)
1920 – 30 (1)
1930 – 40 (3)
1950 – 60
(15)
1960 – 70 (2)
2002 (2)
1993 (6)
1995 (1)
1998 (1)
2000 (2)
2001 (1)
2002 (3)
2003 (4)
2004 (10)
2005 (5)
2009 (8)
2015 (2)
2017 (4)
[Gift of - ]
- Mrs. Chung-hee Kim (9)
- Han Sang-soo (4)
- Sookee Chung (4)
- Mrs. Ann Witter (3)
- the artist (Koo Haeja) on
behalf of Dr. Minjee Kim (3)
- Rand Castile in Honor of
Clifford J. Fowkes (1)
- Dr. Forrest Mortimer (1)
- Mrs. and Mrs. Edward K.
Kang (1)
- Kyung H. Yoon (1)
- Mrs. Georgia Sales (1)
Wrapping cloth
(bojagi)
- The largest jogakbo
collection in the
American museums
- Five works were on
view as of Mar. 2019
- The Art of Korea
(2006) provides a
detailed description of
selected bojagi

116
Kim, The Art of Korea, 52.
117
This table is filled out based on the author’s research of the museums’ publications and websites as well
as reports and catalogues of survey results on Korean antiques housed in foreign institutions conducted by the
National Research Institute of Cultural Heritage of Korea 국립문화재연구소.
118
The Birmingham Museum of Art has two bojagi from ca.1900, marked as Wrapping Cloth (Bojagi),
purchased with funds provided by Helen Hudgens, but no photograph is available, hence whether they are jogakbo
or not could not be confirmed.
45

Name of
Museum
Number
of bojagi
(jogakbo)
Production
Time
(Number)
Accession
Year
(Number)
Credit Line including
Provenance, if available
(Number)
Marked as
&
Remarks
2003 (5)
2012 (1)
2014 (1)
- Keum Ja Kang (1)
- Mary C. Stoddard (1)
- Members of the 2004 Jade
Circle trip to Korea (1)
- Anonymous (1)
[Acquisition made possible
by-]
- Mrs. Ann Witter (7)
- The Korean Art and
Culture Committee (6)
- Dr. Richard S. Hahn (1)
- Chung-hee Kim (1)
Newark
Museum
16 (14) 19
th
c. (1)
ca. 1905 (1)
20
th
c. (6)
Late 20
th
c.
(8)
1934 (1)
1988 (1)
1994 (2)
1995 (3)
2001 (1)
2002 (7)
2006 (1)
- Gift of the estate of Mrs.
Edward Henry
Harriman, 1934 (1)
- Gift of Mrs. Lea R.
Sneider (1)
- Gift of Dr. Chung
Young Yang (7)
- Purchase (7)
Wrapping Cloth /
Pojagi wrapping cloth
- One estimated to be
made in 1905 is an
actual wrapping cloth
that wrapped around
the portrait of Gojong
Emperor
- Seven works from Dr.
Chung are from
Harbin and are
attributed to Jin Yuan
Shan, a Korean
Chinese artist
- One work is attributed
to Chunghie Lee
Los Angeles
County
Museum of
Art
9 (9) 20
th
c. (9) 1995 (4)
1997 (2)
2004 (1)
2006 (1)
2018 (1)
- Purchase from R-L
Sneider Inc. (7)
- Gift of Lyn Gibor (1)
- Gift of Janet Francine
Cobert (1)
Wrapping Cloth
(Bojagi)

Detroit
Institute of
Arts
8 (8) Early 20
th
c.
(1)
20
th
c. (2)
Mid-late 20
th

c. (3)
1990 (1)
2008 (1)
2015 (5),
2018 (3)
- Purchase through the
Kang Collection Korean
Art Gallery (6)
- Gift of the Kang
Collection Korean Art
Gallery (2)
Bojagi
- Two of them are
framed
- Two contemporary
jogakbo are attributed
to Keum Joo Ahn.
Seattle Art
Museum
5 (4) Late 19
th
c.
(1)
20
th
c. (2)
Early 20
th
c.
(1)
1990 (1)
1992 (1)
1993 (1)
1996 (3)
- Purchase with the
Margaret E. Fuller
Purchase Fund, Asian
Art Acquisition Fund
and Korean Art
Purchase Fund (3)
Bojagi (Wrapping
Cloth) / Pojagi (Gift
Cover)
- The only embroidered
bojagi was made by
Youngyeul Kim.
46

Name of
Museum
Number
of bojagi
(jogakbo)
Production
Time
(Number)
Accession
Year
(Number)
Credit Line including
Provenance, if available
(Number)
Marked as
&
Remarks
- Estate of Pauline King
Butts (1)
- Gift of Marshall and
Helen Hatch (1)
- “Do Ho Suh borrows
some of the aesthetic
principles of this
traditional Korean
textile”
Portland Art
Museum
5 (5) 20
th
c. (3)
2001 (2)
1997 (1)
2001 (1)
2002 (1)
2006 (2)
- Museum Purchase (1)
- The Carol and Seymour
Haber Collection (1)
- Gift of Bongja Jung in
honor of Junghee Lee
(2)
- Gift of Dorothy
Lemelson (1)
Patchwork Wrapping
Cloth (Jogakbo) /
Bojagi
- Two works made in
2001 are attributed to
Chunghie Lee
- Two works are
currently on view
Metropolitan
Museum of
Art
4 (4) 1950-1980
(4)
2007 (4) - Purchase from Kang
Collection, Inc. (4)
Patchwork wrapping
cloth (jogakbo)
- Two are currently on
view
Art Institute
Chicago
4 (4) 1875-1925
(1)
19
th
c. (1)
1999-2000
(1)
1996 (2)
1999 (1)
2001 (1)
- Louise Lutz Endowment
(3)
- Gift of Professor Yeon
Soon Chang (1)

Wrapping cloth, Pojagi
- One is marked as
“Modern
Interpretation of
Traditional Pojagi”
without the name of
the maker.
Virginia
Museum of
Fine Arts
4 (4) 1960-1980
(4)
2017 (4) - Purchase through Arthur
and Margaret Glasgow
Endowment (4)
Wrapping cloth
(Bojagi)
- Probably purchased
through the Kang
Collection
Smithsonian
Institution
National
Museum of
Natural
History
3 (0) Late 19
th
c.
(1)
1886 (1)
2014 (2)
- From the Bernadou
Collection (1)
- Gift of National Folk
Museum of Korea (2)
- Two silk bojagi are
used to wrap a gift, Jade
Seal (Reproduction)
with Lacquer Box, from
the National Folk
Museum of Korea to
commemorate the
opening of the Korea
Gallery at the National
Museum of Natural
History in 2007, which
later closed in 2017.
Philadelphia
Museum of
Art
3 (3) Early 20
th
c.
(1)
2001 (2)
2002 (3) - Gift of an anonymous
donor (3)
Wrapping Cloth
(Bojagi) / Cover
(Bojagi)
- 2 works are attributed
to Hyeon-hui Kim
(b.1946)
Arthur M.
Sackler
Museum
3 (3) Late 19
th
c. –
Early 20
th
c.
(3)
2004 (2)
2005 (1)
- Purchase from R-L
Sneider Inc., New York,
2004 (2)
Pojagi (with
description of each item
such as “'Pojagi' with
47

Name of
Museum
Number
of bojagi
(jogakbo)
Production
Time
(Number)
Accession
Year
(Number)
Credit Line including
Provenance, if available
(Number)
Marked as
&
Remarks
(Harvard
University)
- Gift of Lea Sneider (1) Repeating Geometric
Pattern”)
Honolulu
Museum of
Art
3 (3) 20
th
c. (3) 1992 (1)
1994 (2)
Not Available Wrapping Cloth
Rhode
Island
School of
Design
Museum
3 (3)

20
th
c. (1)
ca.1950 (2)
2002 (1)
2018 (2)
- Mary B. Jackson Fund
(1)
- Museum purchase:
anonymous gift and
Museum property, by
exchange (2)
Patchwork Wrapping
Cloth (Chogak po
pojagi) / Pojagi
- 2 recent acquisitions
are featured in Repair
and Design Futures
(Oct.5, 2018 – Jun.30,
2019)
Jordan
Schnitzer
Museum of
Art
(University
of Oregon)
3 (3) Early 20
th
c.
(2)
2007 (1)
1987 (1)
2008 (1)
2017 (1)
- Gift of Mrs. Kyungsook
Cho Gregor (2)
- Purchase (1)
Wrapping Cloth
(Bojagi)
- One contemporary
work is attributed to
Jiseon Lee Isbara
Museum of
Fine Arts
Boston
2 (2) Early 20
th
c.
(1)
20
th
c. (1)
2009 (2) - Gift of the Keum Ja
Kang Collection
(Previously purchased
by Kang in 1998) (2)
Wrapping cloth
(sangpo) / Table cover /
pojagi
Museum of
Fine Arts,
Houston
2 (2) 20
th
c. (2) 2018 (2) - Museum purchase
funded by Chong-Ok
Lee Matthew (Acquired
by private collector,
California, 2015; [Kang
Collection, 2016]) (2)
Patchwork Bojagi
(Wrapping Cloth)
- Both are framed
Cooper
Hewitt,
Smithsonian
Design
Museum
2 (2) ca. 1900 (2) 1994 (2) - Purchase (2) Wrapping cloth
(Bojagi)
Spencer
Museum of Art
(University
of Kansas)
1 (1) Late 1800s 2013 - Purchase (1) bojagi (wrapping cloth)
Peabody
Essex
Museum
1 (1) 20
th
c. (1) Not
Available
- Purchase (1) Bojagi (Wrapping
cloth)
- Made with a sewing
machine
American
Museum of
Natural
History
1 (0) 20
th
c. (1) 2011 - Donor: Laurel Kendall
(Curator of Asian
Ethnology and Division
Chair, Division of
Anthropology,
American Museum of
Natural History) (1)
SQUARE PIECE OF
FABRIC, CARRYING
CLOTH?
- under Asian
Ethnographic
Collection of the
museum
48

[Selected examples of bojagi collections in American museums]

Figure 13 Unknown. Wrapping Cloth (Bojagi), late
20th century. Los Angeles County Museum of Art,
Los Angeles. In Korean art collection of the Los
Angeles County Museum of Art, U.S.A. Daejeon,
Korea: Gungnip Munhwajae Yeonguso [National
Research Institute of Cultural Heritage], 2012.
Figure 12 Pojagi (Decorative fabric in which to
wrap a parcel or an offering of food), late 19th –
early 20th century. From: Harvard Art
Museums/Arthur M. Sackler Museum (digital
image received on May 31, 2019)
Figure 14 Anonymous. Wrapping cloth(bojagi),
1950-1960. From: Asian Art Museum,
http://searchcollection.asianart.org/view/objects/a
sitem/id/21480 (accessed on Jan 5, 2019)
Figure 15 Wrapping cloth (sangpo), early 20th
century. From Museum of Fine Arts Boston,
https://collections.mfa.org/objects/527604/wrapping-
cloth-sangpo (accessed on Jan 5, 2019)
49

The table reveals valuable information about bojagi collections in American museums. First,
it suggests that jogakbo occupy the majority of bojagi accession in American museums. Among the
129 bojagi, 92% (118) of them are jogakbo and many of them possibly attract the museum visitors of
today with their varied colors and dynamic composition of patches. The 10 non-jogakbo are either
other kinds of decorative bojagi, like subo, embroidered bojagi, or bojagi that became a subsidiary
part of the collection as an actual wrapping cloth along with the main object that was wrapped with
the bojagi, such as the navy bojagi at the Newark Museum, which was used to wrap the tinted
photograph of Emperor Gojong. In other words, aside from the three bojagi that were acquired
mainly due to the functionality they possessed, it was mostly jogakbo that were chosen to be
collected by those who previously owned them and the American museums that either purchased or
accepted donation of them. For Profusion of Color, 20 bojagi that are not jogakbo were seen by
visitors. One presumable account for this predominance of jogakbo is associated with the patchwork
design of jogakbo that gives an impression of “abstractness” to viewers of today. As explained
above, the patchwork design was initially out of necessity to make the most of fabrics left over from
making clothes. While subo often contain the motifs of birds and flowers or Chinese characters like
su 壽 and bok 福,and dangchaebo 당채보, royal bojagi with painted decorations,
119
are painted
with auspicious symbols of different animals and flowers, jogakbo is usually free of any recognizable
objects or ideographs. Instead, it comprises geometric patterns created by scraps of fabrics in
different colors and sizes. Therefore, jogakbo could have been relatively easily consumed by
American audiences who were not familiar with the original symbolism and cultural background
from Korea. Also, because of the visual similarity it has with some Western abstract paintings that
are commonly compared to jogakbo, it could come across as more “palatable” to an American
audience. Whether it is proper to appreciate the mere image of jogakbo detached from its history and

119
Kumja Paik Kim and Donghwa Huh. Profusion of Color: Korean Costumes & Wrapping Cloths of the
Chosŏn Dynasty. (San Francisco: Asian Art Museum of San Francisco, 1995), 29.
50

meaning is certainly debatable, but at least it seems probable that the jogakbo, an everyday object
from Korea, had a better chance initially to become part of these museum collections because of its
formal characteristics.
The estimated time of production for the bojagi ranges from the late nineteenth century to an
unspecified time in the twentieth century with a few exceptions that were made in the 1990s or even
in very recent years by living artists whose medium is bojagi. Except for these contemporary works,
the makers of bojagi are not identified, which is understandable since the makers did not consider
themselves artists and did not sign the pieces or leave any documentation about them. Therefore,
both production time and the identity of the makers can only be roughly guessed. It is notable that
some museums attribute these bojagi to “unknown artist,” however. Those women of the commoner
class who made bojagi are accredited as artists here and often compared to artists such as Piet
Mondrian and Paul Klee.
There are some iterations in how each bojagi is referenced in museums and these are partially
due to the two different romanization systems that have been employed for the Korean language:
McCune–Reischauer and Revised Romanization. Most cases provide both the names “bojagi” (or
pojagi) and “wrapping cloth,” and the name “jogakbo” (or chogakbo) also appears with the English
description “patchwork wrapping cloth,” as seen in the case of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
Some names indicate the specific function of each bojagi, such as “food cover” or “gift cover,” but it
is more common to find the title “bojagi” with the design feature of the object: for instance, “‘Pojagi’
with Repeating Geometric Pattern” in the Arthur M. Sackler Museum’s case. While the bojagi
collected by Bernadou had long been identified as “carrying cloth,” it seems that the name “bojagi”
has gained enough currency to be more readily used in today’s museums.
51

Not every museum provides the provenance information of each bojagi, but when studying
how these bojagi entered the different institutions in the United States, the names of Lea R. Sneider
and the Kang Collection frequently come up. The Newark Museum and Arthur M. Sackler Museum
each house one jogakbo gifted from Lea Sneider, and the Los Angeles County Museum and Arthur
M. Sackler Museum purchased multiple jogakbo from R-L Sneider, Inc., her namesake business,
which used to be based in New York. Lea Sneider was the wife of Richard L. Sneider, a former U.S.
ambassador to South Korea and Deputy Assistant Secretary of State.
120
She spent four years in Korea
with her husband, who served from 1973 to 1978, and during his appointment, she developed a
passion for Korean folk art, which had remained largely unexplored in the West.
121
After her return,
she established herself as an art collector and dealer, and she also co-curated Auspicious Spirits as
mentioned earlier. Along with other everyday Korean objects whose beauty Lea Sneider recognized,
ten or more jogakbo entered the United States to become part of museum collections within a couple
of decades. Now they are available for a broader audience to enjoy their beauty. Another name
associated with the provenance of some jogakbo is the Kang Collection, founded by Keumja Kang.
At least 12 jogakbo were purchased through the Kang Collection by institutions such as the
Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Detroit Institute of Arts, and the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston.
Kang also donated more jogakbo to the collections of the latter two of these museums. Kang built her
collection around the time Sneider left Korea to return to the United States with her collection of
Korean art. Starting in 1978, during the three years that she spent in Korea after her first stint in the
United States, Kang explored markets where she could find exquisite works of Korean art,
122
which
then led her to open the Kang Collection in 1981, a minute’s walk from the Metropolitan Museum of
Art. The Kang Collection has supplied works of Korean art to various art museums in the United

120
“Richard Sneider, Ex-Diplomat, Dies,” New York Times (New York, NY), Aug.16, 1986.
121
Daniel Sneider, “Gallery Talk: The Sneider Legacy” for Korea Society, Nov.17, 2014,
https://www.koreasociety.org/special-events/young-professionals/item/752
122
“Gomisureul allineun samyeong”, Harper’s Bazaar Korea, Apr. 2017, 132-133.
52

States, and the jogakbo has played an important role in making these museums’ Korean art
collections more diverse, beyond ceramics and paintings. Other notable names among the donors of
jogakbo include Rand Castile, a former director of the Asian Art Museum and the Japan Society,
who donated a ramie jogakbo to the Asian Art Museum in 1993, and Chung Young Yang, a
renowned embroidery artist and a founder of the Chung Young Yang Embroidery Museum at
Sookmyung Women’s University in Seoul, Korea, donated seven jogakbo to the Newark Museum in
2002.
As Table 1 suggests the absolute majority of jogakbo that are currently housed in American
museums were acquired no sooner than 1990. Unless circumstantial evidence of each case of
donation or purchase is closely examined, any attempt to make a definitive statement explaining why
this happened around that time would be presumptuous. However, it is still noteworthy that the rise
of jogakbo collections in American museums coincides with the emergence of Korean folk art and
the increase in the number of Korean galleries inside American museums. As discussed earlier in this
paper, the 1980s was when more diverse aspects of Korean art started to be presented by Auspicious
Spirits, the first exhibition in the United States that exclusively featured Korean folk paintings and
other everyday objects with decorative elements, and also by From the Land of the Morning Calm:
Korean Art at the Brooklyn Museum, which exhibited Korean folk art from that museum’s collection.
In the 1990s, the number of Korean galleries
123
in the United States began to increase with aid from
the Korea Foundation 국제교류재단, a non-profit organization established in 1991 that is committed
to promoting a better understanding of Korea in the international community.
124
Museums like the
Honolulu Museum of Art (formerly Honolulu Academy of Arts), Brooklyn Museum of Art, and Los

123
Here, Korean gallery refers to a gallery space located inside a museum outside Korea that displays the
cultural properties of Korea although each museum has its own name for the space. As the scope of the paper is
limited to museums in the United States, only Korean galleries in American museums will be discussed.
124
“Who We Are,” Korea Foundation, accessed Jun.20, 2019,
http://en.kf.or.kr/?menuno=3774&kflnbindex=
53

Angeles County Museum of Art already opened dedicated spaces for Korean art in 1960, 1974, and
1978, respectively, but it was in the 1990s that the number of Korean galleries showed noticeable
growth. Since 1992, the Korea Foundation has supported the installation and expansion of Korean
galleries in overseas museums.
125
In addition, the National Museum of Korea also provided
substantial help, including loans from its permanent collection to American museums. Financial
support from the private sector, including Samsung and Amore Pacific, also contributed to the rise.
Since 1991, museums including the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco (1991, expanded in 2003),
Philadelphia Museum of Art (1992),
126
Seattle Art Museum (1992, expanded in 1994), Freer Gallery
of Art & Arthur M. Sackler Gallery (1992), Portland Art Museum (1997), Metropolitan Museum of
Art (1998), Peabody Essex Museum (2003), Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (2007), University of
Michigan Museum of Art (2009), Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (opened in 1982, renovated in 2012),
and Cleveland Museum of Art (2013, renovated in 2016) either opened or renovated their Korean
galleries.
127
Those that already had a Korean gallery prior to 1991, such as the Honolulu Museum of
Art, doubled the size of their Korean galleries; the Los Angeles County Museum of Art also
underwent expansions, both in 1999 and 2009.
128

Admittedly, the idea of classifying and separating art mainly based on its origin has often
been contested. However, it is inevitably true that with the increased capacity for featuring Korean
art in these museums and ongoing cooperation with Korean institutions such as the Korea

125
Keum-jin Yoon, “Establishment of New Korean Galleries at Overseas Museum,” in Miguk,
hangungmisureul mannada [Korean Art from the United States], (Seoul: National Museum of Korea, 2012)
126
Unlike the cases of Korean galleries in other museums, the funding for the Korean gallery in the
Philadelphia Museum of Art was from the museum budget as well as funds raised by the Korean Heritage Group, a
group committed to promoting Korean culture throughout the Philadelphia region. (Keum-jin Yoon, “Establishment
of New Korean Galleries at Overseas Museum” in Miguk, hangungmisureul mannada [Korean Art from the United
States], (Seoul: National Museum of Korea, 2012))
127
Eung-cheon Choi, “The Present State of Korean Galleries in Foreign Museums and Issue Facing Them”
in Hangungmisul jeonsiwa yeongu [Exhibiting Korean Art: Proceedings of the 2006 International Symposium of
Korean art], (Seoul: National Museum of Korea, 2007), 315-320.
128
Yoon, “Establishment of New Korean Galleries at Overseas Museum,” 217.
54

Foundation,
129
National Museum of Korea, and National Palace Museum of Korea, more objects that
had previously had little chance to be placed on view were given a greater opportunity to be
displayed before the eyes of American audiences. This improvement may be responsible for the
increase in the number of Korean objects in each museum collection, and it is plausible that
previously overlooked objects like jogakbo gained a better chance to step across the museum
threshold as a result. As Table 1 shows, more jogakbo started to be brought into the collections of
American museums in the 1990s when the scope of Korean art presented in the United States grew
wider and more space became available for Korean art in these museums.
This increase in Korean galleries largely enabled by assistance from Korea since the 1990s
was accompanied by an increase in curators of Korean art in American museums.
130
In 1989, the
Asian Art Museum of San Francisco became the first U.S. public museum to set up an independent
department for Korean art, and Kumja Paik Kim, who later curated Profusion of Color, was
appointed as Curator of Korean Art, making her the nation’s first curator of Korean art. Since then, a
few more curators
131
have been appointed for Korean art by other museums as well, which has

129
Currently, the Korea Foundation supports overseas museums with their special exhibitions and various
education programs related to Korea.
130
Kumja Paik Kim, “Korean Art Collections and Galleries in US Museums” in Miguk, hangungmisureul
mannada [Korean Art from the United States], (Seoul: National Museum of Korea, 2012), 204.
131
As of June 2019, there are four curators of Korean art in American museums: Hyonjeong Kim Han
(Associate Curator of Korean Art, the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco), Sooa Im McCormick (Associate
Curator of Korean Art, Cleveland Museum of Art), Virginia Moon (Assistant Curator of Korean Art, Los Angeles
County Museum of Art), and Hyunsoo Woo (The Maxine and Howard Lewis Curator of Korean Art, Philadelphia
Museum of Art). Soyoung Lee, who served at the Metropolitan Museum of Art since 2003 as the museum’s first
curator for Korean art, joined the Harvard Art Museums in June 2018 as its Chief Curator. Given the fact that all the
curators mentioned here are female and the growing interest in representing works produced by previously
underrepresented group of people in art world, it can be speculated that these trends partially contributed to the rise
of bojagi in American art museums.
55

helped to enable some major exhibitions that have explored more specific themes or periods,
132

unlike the survey exhibitions of the past, such as Masterpieces of Korean Art or Treasures from
Korea. Upon the opening of these Korean galleries and other special exhibitions, more exhibition and
collection catalogues related to Korean art were published, and jogakbo started to be discussed more.
Through these published channels, which previously were not accessible to jogakbo, the terms bojagi
and jogakbo themselves are explained, and their history, usage, makers, and designs are discussed in
detail alongside true color photographs of the exhibited jogakbo. Having been incorporated in the
museum proper, jogakbo have become a subject of study within the context of art, where its visuality
is more closely explored in the United States like other artworks in museum collections.

Conclusion
From the very beginning, bojagi can be seen as playing multivalent roles and it has now
taken on yet another role, that of an artwork that is displayed and appreciated for its visual qualities.
As some of its original functions have fallen away, the aesthetics of bojagi have become more
discernible, and bojagi have become a significant part of museum collections in the United States,
where many examples are exhibited and researched in the museum proper. It was not until the 1990s

132
The selected examples are Goryeo Dynasty: Korea’s Age of Enlightenment, 918 – 1392 (Asian Art
Museum, Oct. 18, 2003 – Jan. 1, 2004), Beauty and Learning: Korean Painted Screens (Metropolitan Museum of
Art, Mar. 11 – Jun. 1, 2008), Art of the Korean Renaissance, 1400 – 1600 (Metropolitan Museum of Art, Mar. 17 –
Jun. 21, 2009), In Grand Style: Celebrations in Korean Art During the Joseon Dynasty (Asian Art Museum, Oct. 25,
2013–Jan. 12, 2014), Treasures from Korea: Arts and Culture of the Joseon Dynasty, 1392-1910 (Philadelphia
Museum of Art, Mar. 2 – May 26, 2014, LACMA, Jun. 29–Sep. 28, 2014, and Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Nov.
2, 2014–Jan. 11, 2015), Chaekgeori: The Power and Pleasure of Painted Screens (Charles B. Wang Center, Stony
Brook University, Sep. 29 – Dec. 23, 2016, Spencer Museum of Art, The University of Kansas, Apr. 15 – Jun. 11,
2017, and Cleveland Museum of Art, Aug. 5 – Nov. 5, 2017), and the very recent Beyond Line: The Art of Korean
Writing (LACMA, Jun. 16 – Sep. 29, 2019)
56

that the presence of bojagi in representing Korean art in the United States became conspicuous. First,
Korean art in general was overlooked and overshadowed by Chinese and Japanese art, and even
when Korean art started to gain a stronger presence in the United States with the active support of
Korean governmental organizations, bojagi had no place in the American art world’s conception of
Korean art. In the late 1980s and more so in the 1990s, Korean folk art became more integrated into
the realm of Korean art, and around the same time, as the Korea Foundation began providing more
financial aid to open Korean galleries in overseas museums, more exhibition opportunities became
available for Korean art in the United States. This type of support has helped bojagi gain entrance
into American museums, and exhibitions like Profusion of Color have given American audiences the
opportunity to consume the images of exuberant color and geometric composition associated with
bojagi, even as they turned bojagi into a subject for aesthetic research and education. Today, bojagi,
and especially jogakbo, are housed by many art museums in the United States, and jogakbo are
perceived as artworks that are detached from any function that they may have originally had. This
paper does not argue that foreign eyes “discovered” the beauty of bojagi or that external verification
from America or other parts of the world finally “elevated” the status of bojagi. Rather, the purpose
of this study is to follow the journey of bojagi from Korea to the United States in order to understand
the trajectory and process by which a utilitarian object from Korea came to be appreciated in art
museums in the United States and the factors that contributed to facilitating this transition.
57

While it is beyond the scope of this paper to discuss in detail how the bojagi has inspired
contemporary art and design, it is fitting to end with some general observations. Renowned artists
such as Kimsooja and Do Ho Suh and the imagery in their works can be understood in relation to a
nostalgia for “nomadic” people who move back and forth across borders. In Kimsooja’s works
(Figure 16, 17), for instance, one can clearly
see the portability and the adaptability of
bojagi
133
and the bottari 보따리 which are
made of fabrics that might have been thrown
away if they had not been “recycled.” In his
Home series (Figure 1), Do Ho Suh recreates
his previous residences using flimsy and
almost transparent textiles. The lightweight
textile works can easily be transported and
installed in galleries and museums. Beyond

133
It transforms based on what it encompasses unlike a bag whose form is already fixed so it is the content
that needs to be fitted in the form.
Figure 16 Kimsooja Portrait of Yourself (1985),
http://www.kimsooja.com/works_sewn_pieces.html,
accessed on Aug.1, 2019
Figure 17 Kimsooja Bottari (2005/2017),
http://www.kimsooja.com/projects_2017_Docu
menta.html#, accessed on Aug.1, 2019
Figure 18 The collection from Chanel’s Cruise 2015/2016
inspired by jogakbo
(https://www.fashionsfinest.com/fashion/itemlist/tag/Chane
l, accessed Aug.10, 2019)
58

these two examples, there are many other examples of various aspects of bojagi and jogakbo that
have influenced many artists and designers, and not necessarily those just born in Korea. Their
influence can be found in works of contemporary art and costumes in fashion shows around the
world, for instance, in the work of designer Karl Lagerfeld, who has presented works inspired by
jogakbo. (Figure 18)
Also, although this paper primarily discusses exhibitions of bojagi to date, an area that would
certainly benefit from further investigation is a comparative study of upcoming exhibitions such as
the Korean patchwork and embroidery exhibition at the Cleveland Museum of Art, which is slated to
open in March 2020.
134
Furthermore, it would be worth exploring the way in which the bojagi is
displayed and represented in Korea, especially since Huh’s collection will be on view at the Seoul
Craft Museum which is slated to open in 2020. As with other objects defined as “craft,” it can be
expected that different techniques and patterns employed for making bojagi will be emphasized in
the museum, perhaps drawing a stark contrast to the display of bojagi in American museums,
particularly the display of the two jogakbo at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, introduced at the
outset of this paper, for instance. Hopefully, topics such as these that this paper could not cover will
be pursued by other scholars in the future.
In closing: these words by the Korean-born artist Do Ho Suh from a conversation with
Catherine Roche, the curator of Luminous: The Art of Asia (Oct. 13, 2011 – Jan. 8, 2012, Seattle Art
Museum), for which Suh’s installation work, Gate (Figure 19) was commissioned, resonate with the
bojagi’s journey to American museums.

134
The Korean title of the exhibition is tentatively “황금바늘: 조선시대의 자수” [Golden Needles:
Korean Embroidery and Patchwork], but the English title was not yet decided as of March 2019, based on an email
exchange between the author and Sooa Im McCormick, Associate Curator of Korean Art at the Cleveland Museum
of Art.
59

The museum is a space of displacement. Every object in a museum has been moved
from its original context and placed on a pedestal. It is all flattened out. A tenth-century
Buddhist statue sits next to a Joseon dynasty ceramic bowl. While it is not possible to
give the entire context of the pieces, it is time to rethink how we see these objects, how
the pieces are put together to tell an overall story.
135

All objects in museums, except for those intended by the maker as art from the outset, have
undergone a process of displacement in order to be placed in a gallery. Borrowing Suh’s words, the
bojagi is “flattened out” both physically and figuratively in American museums. It is framed and
hung on the wall or mounted on a flat board inside a showcase rather than being presented as a three-
dimensional form that covers other objects, the way the cloth was originally intended to be used.
Furthermore, it is definitively understood as detached from its original context. The frugality of
Joseon women or the affectionate aspect of the making process is less underscored and in turn the
aesthetic pleasure that the bojagi instills is more greatly highlighted. The same jogakbo that once
hung only next to other bojagi or other objects from Korea are now displayed alongside objects that
are not necessarily from Korea. As the ways in which bojagi are introduced to audiences becomes
more diversified, what people see in them will become further varied as well. Formerly a symbol of
the sincerity and thriftiness of Korean women, the bojagi is now an art object, attributed to an
“unknown artist,” and it certainly projects quite a different image and evokes a wider range of
feelings and reactions among today’s broader audience in American museums than it did in the past.

135
From the press release for Luminous: The Art of Asia that the Seattle Museum of Art released on the
website of Lehmann Maupin, the gallery representing Do Ho Suh. (https://www.lehmannmaupin.com/museums-
and-global-exhibitions/luminous-the-art-of-asia/press-release)
60

Figure 19 Do Ho Suh, Gate Installation view, Luminous: The Art of Asia Seattle Art Museum, 2011 photo by
Nathaniel Willson (https://www.lehmannmaupin.com/museums-and-global-exhibitions/luminous-the-art-of-
asia, accessed Aug 10, 2019)
61

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Asset Metadata

Creator Shin, Jaewon (author)

Core Title The journey of bojagi to the West: from an everyday object in Korea to the realm of art in the United States

School College of Letters, Arts and Sciences

Degree Master of Arts

Degree Program East Asian Area Studies

Publication Date 10/21/2019

Defense Date 10/19/2019

Publisher University of Southern California (original), University of Southern California. Libraries (digital)

Tag American museums,bojagi,collection history,exhibition history,jogakbo,Korean art,mingei,museum studies,OAI-PMH Harvest,patchwork,textile arts,wrapping cloth

Language English

Contributor Electronically uploaded by the author (provenance)

Advisor Lippit, Miya Elise Mizuta (committee chair), Bernards, Brian (committee member), Choe, Youngmin (committee member)

Creator Email jaewonsh@usc.edu,june.jwshin@gmail.com

Permanent Link (DOI) https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-c89-227097

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