THE CHUNG YOUNG YANG EMBROIDERY MUSEUM
A new museum opening in Seoul
| The Chung Young Yang Embroidery Museum will open on May 11, 2004, in a new, five-story building on the campus of Sookmyung Women's University in Seoul. The Embroidery Museum's exhibition space will be located on the first floor of the building, and exhibition space for the University Museum, now housed elsewhere on campus, will be on a lower level. The remaining floors will house an information center, a library, conservation studios, storage areas for the museums' collections, classrooms, and a 300-seat auditorium equipped with earphones for simultaneous translation. |  |
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A rendering of the Chung Young Yang Museum |
Young Yang Chung was awarded an honorary doctorate by Sookmyung Women's University in 2000, and since then has traveled there twice a year to give lectures. She is working closely with the university not only in planning the museum but also in setting up undergraduate and graduate programs in textile studies. Sookmyung Women's University, one of the first private schools for women in Korea, was founded in 1906 with funding from the imperial family and has a long association with embroidery, which was originally taught as part of the home economics department. Through the establishment of the museum and the new programs, it now aims to become a leading center for scholarship on embroidery, as well as the other textile arts.
The inaugural exhibition, which Young Yang Chung is curating, will include examples of embroidered clothing and costume accessories, domestic furnishings, and religious articles from across East Asia, tracing the origins of the main embroidery techniques, motifs, and styles, and their dissemination throughout the region for over two thousand years. Future exhibitions will explore other aspects of the textile arts, for, as Chung says, "In my mind, the museum should become a center for learning about all types of fiberworkembroidered costumes, the decorative arts (including furniture and accessories), weaving, tapestry, quiltingand include examples not just from East Asia but from all over the world."