Korean Scholars Say 4 LACMA Paintings Are Fake
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| Park Soo-keun or imitator, Three Women and a Child, about 1961. LACMA, gift of Drs. Chester Chang and Cameron C. Chang |
A group of scholars is charging that four 20th-century Korean paintings recently shown at LACMA are likely to be fake. According to reports in Korea JoongAng Daily and artnet, LACMA held an appraisal session with experts in late June. The contested paintings are Park Soo-keun's Waikiki and Three Women and a Child and Lee Jung-seob's A Bull and a Child and Crawling Children. All were in "Korean Treasures from the Chester and Cameron Chang Collection," a show that closed June 30.
The disputed pieces aside, some of the experts were less than enthustiastic about the collection's overall quality. Dong-guk Lee, director of the Gyeonggi Provincial Museum, told The Korea Daily that "Korean Treasures" lacked A-grade pieces, with most rated C to D.
The Chang collection ranges from the Three Kingdoms period to the mid 20th century and includes paintings, calligraphy, ceramics, furniture, scholar's objects, and sculpture. Its core is a family collection that has been intact since the 19th century and was transferred to the U.S. in 1958. The Changs continued to collect, and the four disputed paintings are modern.
According to LACMA's exhibition label, Chester Chang acquired Three Woman and a Child from Gerald Joseph McDonald, an American who helped establish the American Forces radio network during the Korean War. Park's work was popular with American GI's. There is a larger Park painting at the USC Pacific Asia Museum.
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| Park Soo-keun or imitator, Waikiki, early 1960s (with reflections from glazing). LACMA, gift of Drs. Chester Chang and Cameron C. Chang |
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| Lee Jung-seob or imitator, Crawling Children. LACMA, gift of Drs. Chester Chang and Cameron C. Chang |
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| Lee Jung-seob or imitator, Boy Riding a Bull. LACMA, gift of Drs. Chester Chang and Cameron C. Chang |
Also disputed is a 12th-century celadon that a separate panel of ceramics scholars alleged to be a 20th-century imitation. This appears to refer to a Kundika—a Buddhist holy water vessel—in stoneware with celadon glaze, assigned to the Goryeo dynasty, 12th century, on the LACMA label. This, a promised gift from the Changs, was purportedly one of the earliest objects in the exhibition. The experts further claimed that "most of the white porcelain" on display was from the mid-20th century or later.
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| Ceramics from the Chang collection. At far left is the celadon Kundika, assigned to the 12th century |
Almost any large collection has objects that aren't what they were thought to be. That four small, relatively minor paintings (by anyone's standards) and some ceramics are in dispute would not normally rate media attention. But the affair has burgeoned into a fake-Basquiat-like scandal in the Korean-American press. LACMA curator Stephen Little and director Michael Govan have been held responsible for "visitors unknowingly paying to appreciate fake artworks." For Mooyoung Lee, writing in The Korea Daily, "The incident exposed a lack of awareness and understanding of the Korean and Korean-American communities and their artworks."
That assessment can use some context. In 2022 LACMA presented "The Space Between: The Modern in Korean Art," a revelatory show unlike anything seen in the U.S. It included major works by Park Soo-keun and Lee Jung-seob. In 2018 the museum mounted "Beyond Line: The Art of Korean Writing," a calligraphy show that was likewise ground-breaking and critically praised. Korean-American artist Young-Il Ahn got a solo show in 2017. Of late, no American museum has done more for scholarship and public appreciation of Korean art than LACMA has.
Still: It's a bad look to have multiple contested pieces in an exhibition of only about 35 objects. The works in "Korean Treasures" were chosen from the Changs' 2021 gift of 100 pieces.
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| Installation view of LACMA's "The Space Between: The Modern in Korean Art," 2022 |
Comments
There are a lot of creatively and technically skilled people throughout any nation and the world, so it comes down to who's doing the gatekeeping.
In this case, it's people developing a museum building smaller than the one it has replaced, planned for constantly rotating exhibits and under a budget that's being stretched beyond recognition. So their judgment may not be the greatest.
Even very good, totally authentic art given to LACMA may end up appearing or disappearing on a constant basis.
One of the Korean media articles quotes Michael Govan as saying that they wanted to exhibit the collection in the donors' lifetime. I'm not sure it's right to say "Korean Treasures" was rushed, as it came 3 years after the gift. But curator Stephen Little may have elected to defer to the donors' traditional attributions on some pieces, pending further research. Worst-case scenario is that some scholar sees the show and corrects them. Which is what happened!
The part they couldn't have anticipated is how much attention this would get in the general Korean/American media, and how negative that attention would be. Connoisseurs around the globe feel that their opinions are obviously right and anyone who questions those opinions is not only wrong but foolish. The media accounts have tended to take the connoisseurs' "dramatic" ripostes at face value (even when scientific tests challenge some of the claims).
The part of the story that's getting lost is how much LACMA has championed Korean art, traditional and contemporary. I found a lot to like in the Chang show (though I barely remembered the four paintings at the center of the controversy). The 20th-century piece that stuck with me is a luminous 1962 landscape by North Korean painter Gil Jinseob, Beach in Gyeongseong.
How many artists' entire ouevres have been subsumed under another artist's output, until time revealed the truth?
If, as the report states, four paintings in a unvetted collection of 100 are suspect, I don't see the tizzy here.
As for the early-deemed ceramics actually being late, that's easier to assess through lab testing.