KOREA FOUNDATION

The Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA), the largest museum in the Western United States, is home to artifacts from around the world, including ancient Greek and Roman relics and artworks from Latin America, Europe, and such Asian countries as China, India, Korea, and Japan. Among the Korean works in the LACMA collection are portraits of Korean scholar-officials from antiquity.

In an introduction to these portraits, LACMA explains that the scholar-officials were a highly educated ruling class that emerged during the Joseon Dynasty (1392–1910) as Joseon founder Yi Seong-gye adopted neo-Confucianism (seongrihak) and established new principles for the nation’s governance. This new class, also called the yangban, redirected the course of Korean history and art history, challenging the aristocratic families that had monopolized power during the Goryeo Dynasty (918–1392) that preceded the Joseon Dynasty, the introduction says.

LACMA Portrait of Scholar Korean history