By Seo Dong-shin
Staff Reporter
Gwangju Biennale Thursday withdrew its decision to appoint Shin Jeong-ah, an assistant professor at Dongguk University as the artistic director of the 2008 biennale due to her forgery of academic records.
``We're sorry to those who have nurtured the Gwangju Biennale as it is today _ Gwangju citizens and people who love culture and arts,'' said Han Kap-su, executive chairman of the nation's foremost art biennale, in a press conference in Gwangju. Claiming the executive board of the biennale knew nothing about Shin's forgery, he said, ``We're seeking to take legal action against Shin.''
In a series of dramatic revelations, elite academic records of Shin all turned out to be false. She has been known as ``Cinderella'' in art circles because she reached several coveted major positions at age 35.
Her bachelor's and master's degrees from the University of Kansas did not exist; she dropped out after attending from spring in 1992 to fall in 1996, according to the university spokesman.
Therefore she could not have had a doctor's degree from the department of the history of art at Yale University, which she claimed to have obtained in 2005 with a thesis titled ``Guillaume Apollinaire: Catalyst for Primitivism, For Picabia and Duchamp.'' A paper with the same title was actually submitted in 1981 to the University of Virginia by author Katia Smaltanos.
Shin, who has been staying in Europe recently, denied allegations of academic forgery in an initial telephone interview with a Buddhist newspaper last week.
But her academic records were confirmed false by relevant university authorities. Officials at Dongguk University, a Buddhist-funded institution, claimed that they received a fax message confirming Shin's doctoral degree from Yale University when employing Shin as professor in September 2005. But on Tuesday, Dongguk University admitted that upon a renewed request, Yale University sent a reply this week informing them that Shin had never been enrolled there.
Allegations of possible influence-peddling in Shin's appointments as a professor at Dongguk University and the director for the Gwangju Biennale are snowballing, although the two institutions deny such suspicions. They have refused to disclose the procedures on her hiring. After being appointed assistant professor at Dongguk University despite some internal opposition two years ago, Shin was briskly tapped as co-director of the 7th Gwangju Biennale this month, along with Okwui Enwezor, dean of academic affairs and senior vice president of the San Francisco Art Institute.
Shin serves as a chief curator at the Sungkok Art Museum in Seoul. Exhibitions organized by her include the 40th anniversary exhibition of John Burningham, the internationally acclaimed British children's book author and illustrator, last year and American art photographer William Wegman's ``Funney & Strange'' exhibition which is currently under way.
She also frequently wrote columns in local dailies on art and life. She claimed to have survived the 1995 Sampoong Department Store collapse after eight hours of confinement under broken concrete. She called it a traumatic experience that made her pursue good for the rest of her life, and recalled how things started to look easy after that.
Art critics as well as citizens are expressing shock and awe at the unprecedented trickery, some dubbing her the ``female Hwang Woo-suk of art circles'' and questioning whether this is the sole case of academic records forgery for a career boost in art circles. Shin has said that she will take legal action to prove her innocence.