Co-curated with Professor Ina Asim in support of her Chinese and Asian history courses, this selection of paintings and objects represents ideals of benevolence and loyalty, Confucian values that exerted strong ethical and political influence in China, Korea, and Japan for more than 2,500 years. Featuring an album depicting the Twenty-Four Paragons of Filial Piety (Ershisi xiao) – a series of virtuous men and women whose exemplary conduct has been extolled for generations – along with an exquisite nineteenth-century nonofficial formal jacket for a woman on which are embroidered scenes from The White Snake and Dream of the Red Chamber, and other related works from the museum’s permanent collection.

During Korea’s Joseon dynasty (1392-1910), literati and professional artists created a new type of landscape painting that combined classical Chinese models with native Korean scenery.  Famous historical sites such as the Diamond Mountains were visualized as both real and ideal spaces in a development fueled by heightened national consciousness and a boom in tourism. This exhibition, co-curated by Anne Rose Kitagawa, chief curator and curator of Asian art, and Gina Kim (MA, art history, 2014) Korea Foundation Global Museum Intern, features a number of distinctive Korean landscape paintings, maps, and travel attire. A second theme explored is that of Korean Neo-Confucian scholars who wore pure white clothing and used undecorated porcelain vessels to symbolize their lofty aspirations of frugality and virtue.