Lecture: Textiles and Women’s Culture in Joseon Dynasty Korea

With Lee Talbot, curator, The George Washington University Museum and The Textile Museum

For millennia Korean women have invested a tremendous amount of time in textile production, from cultivating and spinning fibers to dyeing, weaving, and sewing. This lecture will present a dazzling selection of garments, accessories, and furnishings from Korean and American museum collections to explore the role of textiles in upper-status women’s lives during the Joseon dynasty. Examined in light of Joseon literature and other visual arts, these fabrics reveal that when women’s personal freedoms were greatly curtailed, textiles could provide a creative, expressive outlet for women’s feelings as well as a valued source of income and store of wealth.

Presented in partnership with the Gateway Korea Foundation, which received a Creative Impact Fund for Diversifying the Arts grant through the Arts and Education Council.

This virtual program will take place via Zoom and will include opportunities for participants to ask questions with the Q&A feature. Attendees’ mics and cameras will not be activated. This event will have automated closed captions through Zoom.

Attendees must register to receive the Zoom link. Capacity for the live program is limited.