Carved by Korean folk artists in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, these tiny, brightly painted sculptures of clowns, tigers and acrobats—known as kkoktu—would seem to belong in a child’s toy box. For centuries, however, Koreans have used them to decorate coffins.

This exhibition gives Americans a chance to glimpse the rich cultural and spiritual meanings of the kkoktu.

Costumed and posed to reflect the realities of rural Korean village life of the past, individual kkoktus are a window on a period that has left few written records. They’re also a window onto a timeless, characteristically Korean attitude towards death. Though the kkoktus’ gaiety seems incongruous with mourning, they express their culture’s deep desire that the dead enter the next world surrounded by joy-and its appreciation of the fleeting nature of all experience.

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