Long before Korean film, television and music achieved global prominence, the curator and scholar Beth McKillop, who has died of metastatic breast cancer aged 72, was arguing that Korean artistic traditions deserved attention in their own right, rather than as a footnote to the histories of China or Japan.
Through her work at the Victoria & Albert Museum and at the British Library, McKillop helped transform how Korean art was understood, introducing visitors, students and researchers to the country’s ceramics, books and design, and helping establish a field that is now central to the study of east Asian art in Britain.
