'Opening vault: donations from 21 collectors'
By So In-hwa
To celebrate the 70th anniversary of its opening, the National Gugak Center is holding a special exhibition, “Opening the Vault: Initial Showing of Donations from 21 Collectors,” along with the immersive digital artwork “Royal Banquet” (Jinyeon), at the Gugak Museum from Sept. 11, 2021 through Feb. 27, 2022.
The Gugak Museum was established in 1995 under the National Gugak Center (formerly, the National Center for Korean Traditional Performing Arts), the successor to the Joseon Dynasty's Royal Music Institute (Jangagweon).
Since its establishment, the National Gugak Center has been nurturing a creative evolution of traditional arts through performances of music and dance, while also preserving, collecting and exhibiting tangible items related to the performing arts. These include court music scores, paintings and musical instruments such as bronze bells (pyeonjong) and stone chimes (pyeongyeong). The Gugak Archive, established in 2007, also collects and stores other such materials as audio, video and documents relating to music.
For this exhibition, from a total of 180,000 items in 110 donation collections we selected 150 items out of 21 collections. These items, which have never been shown before, include musical instruments, garments, musical scores, notes, pamphlets, tickets and even hotel receipts.
They are categorized into three groups according to donors: 1) the National Gugak Center community, 2) artists and collectors, and 3) scholars and composers who devoted their lives to the world of gugak in a variety of ways, from performing Korean traditional music and dance all over the world to creating, researching and teaching these arts. At this exhibition you will see and hear 70 years of Korean traditional music and dance firsthand.
There are historical documents related to Korean music and dance donated by Japanese musicologist Hisao Tanabe (1883-1984). He successfully argued against dissolution of the Royal Music Institute of the Yi Royal Family (Yiwangjikaakbu) during the Japanese annexation of Korea (1910-1945).
Highly valuing Korean court music and dance, he wrote an article about these arts for a pamphlet promoting the National Gugak Center's first performance abroad in 1964, which was hosted by the Japanese newspaper Yomiuri. That pamphlet is also on display in this exhibition.
Lee Hye-ku (1909-2010), mentor of the current director of research at the National Gugak Center and a pioneer in gugak musicology, donated notes about Hisao Tanabe as well as a large number of his own hand-written papers and historical notes about court music.
Lee Dong-kyu, born in 1945, fifth generation scion of a reputable musical family of the Royal Music Institute and former Court Music director at the Center, donated classical scores used by his father, a legendary classically-trained singer.
These scores include a gugak textbook at the National Gugak Center in Busan in 1952. He appears in his comely folk dance costume in a photo collection, donated by Park Suk-ja, born in 1955, of a tour through Europe in 1973. Park was director of dance at the National Gugak Center.
The translator for the touring troupe was the American-Korean Allan Heyman (1931-2014). His taepyeongso, a Korean double reed instrument, and his rare books on gugak are on display. Heyman also contributed his poetry to “Zen Dance: Meditation in Movement,” by traditional dancer Lee Sun Ock, born in 1943. Her choreography notes and pamphlets about Zen Dance are also on display in this exhibition.
The contributions from this variety of donors, viewed from the perspective of their connections with each other, reflect the history of gugak. These donated materials tell the stories from 70 years of gugak and the National Gugak Center. Through the lives and stories of the exhibition's various donors we can even see how Korean traditional music and dance are a major source in Hallyu (the worldwide Korean Wave).
Along with the exhibition, in special lectures donors and related artists will tell us stories behind the donated materials. We will also hold practical workshops on Gyeonggi folk songs, court dance (jeongjae), Zen dance, and classical songs (jeongga).
During the same exhibition period, on the first floor of the museum, an immersive digital artwork by Imin Jinyeon Dobyeong (1902) ― a folding screen depicting a court banquet in the reign of King Gojong (1863-1907) ― will be shown.
In addition, a musical show with a projection mapping of royal percussion instruments will also be presented. In this space, visitors will feel the relics of the past as vividly as if the items were living objects in the present.
Please come and meet the artists of Korea's musical tradition and listen to their stories. You will be able to picture the past, present and future of Korean traditional music and dance through firsthand knowledge of the relics and families of artists and patrons.
So In-hwa is director at the Gugak Research Division of the National Gugak Center.