Korean Embroidery at the Asian Art Museum

Made it to the Asian Art Museum last weekend for the Yoshitoshi woodcuts exhibit. Big Thanks to Robin and Don for clueing me to that one: it's remarkable and exquisite. You can catch the second half of the show until September 2nd. They organized it in two halves because of the light sensitive pigments in the prints, but holy moly are those colors vibrant!

Upstairs in the permanent collection are a bunch of Silk Embroideries by Korean artist Park Pil-Soon, b. 1949. Neither the museum, nor the internet have any information on her - guess I'll just have to travel to Korea to learn more! They let you take photos upstairs so here are some rather adequate photos of her beautiful work - but I do encourage a visit in person if you live in the Bay Area.





I absolutely love the Magenta, Blue, Glod, Red and White Traditional colors of Korea. The only thing missing this visit were the silk wrap clothes that women used out of scrap silk in these colors. They were used to wrap gifts for auspicious occasions like weddings. Usually the gift would be a wooden duck for good fortune.





That silk robe took her two years to complete. I'm telling you: Go in person!



These are some Japanese grave shrines made from clay that I really like.


This is a Shinto Diety. Normally Shinto dieties were not depicted in human form, but this one is.



More Korean Contemporary art. They organize their permanent collection into region, and by far my favorite regions of the museum are Korea and Japan.