All that is visible is powerless before time.
All that is solid melts into thin air, and what you cherish lives on only in memory. A museum is a battleground against time. It collects items from around the world, which may otherwise vanish or disappear, to help them withstand the test of time. For this reason, we recognize that the most important workers in a museum are the conservators, who fight against the relentless passage of time.
For museum, conservation goes far beyond the simple acts of repairing, restoring, and preserving artifacts. It also serves as a storyteller, carefully appreciating the touch of people from the past and conveying the full range of emotions they likely experienced before those objects.
This exhibition tells the story of the conservation expert Chun Ji-youn, who restored the folding screen of the astronomical chart of Joseon and the West (Astronomical Chart), a treasure in the collection of the National Folk Museum of Korea.
The Astronomical Chart is a work created by people in the past who read the seasons by observing the sky and estimated the times by watching the stars. It is a rare chart that depicts both the sky they once looked up at and the sky observed by Europeans far away. When acquired, the stars and sky in the chart were deteriorating under the relentless forces of time.
The conservator at the National Folk Museum of Korea went back in time to restore the sky as it once was.
Today, we see the sky that people in the past once gazed at and listened for.