Speaker: Christine Hahn, Associate Professor, Department of Art and Art History, Kalamazoo College

A reception to celebrate UMMA's acquisition of "People on the Street" will follow the lecture.

Park Su Geun, one of South Korea’s most beloved painters of the 20th century, is known as much for the development of his textured, rock-like painted surfaces as he is for his subject matter: rural Korean men, women, and children. This lecture traces Park's career between 1940 and his death in 1965, focusing on several interrelated factors that influenced Park's idiosyncratic oeuvre, including his relationship with Western audiences and patrons through the newly formed Bando Gallery in Seoul; his fascination with the French Barbizon painter, Jean-Francois Millet; and his enduring interest in early Korean history and archaeology.

Christine Y. Hahn is Associate Professor of Art History at Kalamazoo College.  Her interest in the painter Park Su-geun evolved out of her doctoral work at the University of Chicago, which examined the development of modern Korean racial, ethnic, and national identity through the vehicle of painters, exhibitions, and the art museum during the mid-20th century.  This work has been supported by the Fulbright and the National Endowment for the Humanities and has been published in the Journal of Visual Resources as well as in a forthcoming issue of positions: asia critique. 

Cosponsored by UMMA.