From Chusa’s Fan Paintings to Mukjukdo... Kansong Revives 48 Non-Designated Cultural Heritage Items

Lottery Fund-Supported Project for Non-Designated Cultural Heritage Conservation
Conservation of Paintings and Rare Books in Kansong Collection Completed
To Be Unveiled at Bohwagak Exhibition in April

The Kansong Art and Culture Foundation announced on March 11 that it has completed preservation treatment for 48 items from its collection, as part of an initiative to preserve and preventively manage non-designated cultural assets that have been left outside the scope of existing management systems.

Before and after images of Samganghaengsildo preservation treatment. The damaged front cover and main text pages were cleaned and reinforced to restore them close to the original state. Photo by Kansong Art and Culture Foundation

The Foundation carried out preservation treatment and damage prevention work for its cultural assets through the "2025 Non-designated Cultural Heritage Preservation and Preventive Management Project" organized by the National Heritage Administration. This project was supported by the Lottery Fund of the Lottery Committee under the Ministry of Economy and Finance.

The preservation targets included 48 items across five non-designated cultural assets from the Kansong Art and Culture Foundation’s collection that had not previously been integrated into any formal management system. Key items included eight panels of "Mokjukdo" by Lee Jeong, a mid-Joseon period painter; ten items including "Sirambyeongbun" and fan paintings by Chusa Kim Jeonghui; historical books such as "Yonggamsugam" and "Samganghaengsildo"; and 30 architectural blueprints, including the "Construction Plan for the New Building of Boseong High School."

The preservation process was carried out according to a plan established through humanities research, scientific analysis, and expert advice on the condition of each item. The work was performed by the Paper and Painting Conservation and Restoration Research Center at the Industry-Academic Cooperation Foundation of Korea National University of Cultural Heritage.

The eight panels of "Mokjukdo" by Lee Jeong, which had previously been stored as separate sheets, were mounted as scrolls to improve both their stability and their suitability for exhibition. Fan paintings, created as line-drawn paintings, had suffered damage from repeated folding, so the preservation work focused on minimizing the creases.

Additionally, historical books such as "Yonggamsugam" and "Samganghaengsildo" were disassembled into single sheets, then cleaned and reinforced where there were missing parts. During this process, it was discovered that some old single-sheet documents had been reused as cover linings, thus newly highlighting their research value.

For the 30 architectural blueprints made with blueprint paper and modern Western paper, which are particularly vulnerable to light and easy to damage, conservation treatment using Hanji (traditional Korean paper) was applied to enhance their stability.

Alongside these efforts, the Kansong Art and Culture Foundation also inspected the condition of around 300 additional non-designated cultural assets—such as ceramics, paintings, historical books, and documents—and conducted simple emergency treatments, updated collection records, and improved storage environments.

Some of the results of these preservation treatments were released to the public during the "Seonwoopungwol" exhibition, held at the Bohwagak Hall of the Kansong Art Museum in Seoul from April 9 to May 25 last year.

A representative of the Foundation stated, "We will continue to explore ways to connect highly valuable artifacts to the national designated cultural heritage system, and strengthen the systematic preservation and management base for non-designated cultural assets."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.