Potter exhibits Korean ceramics at Harvard

Namhi Kim Wagner

By Kwon Mee-yoo

Namhi Kim Wagner, 92, is holding a pottery exhibition at Gallery 224 of the Ceramics Program, Office for the Arts at Harvard in Allston, Mass.

The retrospective exhibition features a wide range of pottery from Kim Wagner's career spanning from a Korean language instructor to a master potter.

Nancy Selvage, former director of the Ceramics Program, Office for the Arts at Harvard, said, "For the past 40 years Namhi Kim Wagner has enhanced the rich history of Korean ceramics with her passion, creative energy, and innovative explorations."

The gallery displays "delicate plates with vibrant stamped patterns, swelling jars encircled with floral carving and large bowls overflowing with big happy fish and lotuses" celebrating Kim Wagner's career.

"Dynamic tension and harmonic unity characterize the relationships between her refined forms and masterful surface decorations," Selvage said of Kim Wagner's works.

Born in Korea in 1923, Kim Wagner grew up in Japan, graduating from Ochanomizu University in Tokyo, Japan and returning to Korea in 1952. She married Choi Byung-woo, former managing editor of The Korea Times, who died in the Second Taiwan Strait Crisis in 1958 while covering the armed conflict as a war correspondent.

Ceramic works by Namhi Kim Wagner on display at Gallery 224 at Harvard in Allston, Mass. / Courtesy of the artist

After teaching the Korean language on the radio for a short time, Kim Wagner moved to the United States in 1961 and tied the knot with Edward Willett Wagner (1924-2001), a professor of Korean studies at Harvard University and founder of the academic discipline in the U.S. Starting in 1964, Kim Wagner worked as an instructor at Harvard’s Korean Language Program and was later promoted to program director before retiring from the post in 1995.

Meanwhile, Kim Wagner showed interest in ceramics as well, began her studies at MIT Pottery Studio in Cambridge in 1971. She was an artist-in-residence at the Harvard Ceramics Program from 1997 to 2004 and her works were selected in 2009 for a collection at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.

Her works are inspired by traditional Korean Buncheong ware, a type of slipware using iron pigment to paint decorative designs.

"Making pottery enabled me to pay homage to my heritage and to distill the aesthetic values I have absorbed along the path my life has taken," Kim Wagner said in an artist's statement. "I discovered my own voice as well as my roots by exploring the expressive possibilities of the Korean Buncheong tradition in my pots."

Kim Wagner described Buncheong as the kind of ceramics that "could not be more Korean, down-to-earth, unpretentious, and exuberant."

"I desperately wanted to create something that was my own out of the traditional forms and white slip decorating techniques. I wanted to express respect, admiration and love for the ancient potters by approaching my work with their same free spirit,” Kim Wagner said.

"In the process of experimentation, practice, and studying Korean ceramics history, I was so happy to find myself ― where I came from and where I was heading. Each stamp and each incision I make on my pots feels like a step closer to these roots and my destiny.”

The exhibit runs until May 21. For more information, visit ofa.fas.harvard.edu/gallery-224.