Jane Portal Explained

Jane Virginia Portal BA, MA, FSA (née Bowerman, born 1955) is a specialist in Chinese and Korean art history, and is Keeper of the Department of Asia at the British Museum.[1] [2]

About

Portal was born in Mtarfa, Malta, where her father served in the British Navy. After attending Maidstone Girls' Grammar School, where she was Head Girl, she studied Chinese at Girton College Cambridge (BA, 1978; MA 2000), and Korean at the School of Oriental and African Studies (BA, 1996). She studied Chinese archaeology at Peking University, 1979-80 (the first British student to do so), and a year studying Korean at Yonsei University, Seoul, 1994–95.[3]

Career

Portal worked as Curator of Chinese and Korean Collections at the British Museum, 1987–2008, creating the Korea Foundation Gallery (the museum's first gallery of Korean art) in 2000. In 2001 and 2002, she made two visits to North Korea, following the establishment of diplomatic relations, and started collecting contemporary works from the DPRK for the British Museum. In 2007, she curated the exhibition "The First Emperor: China's Terracotta Army", which attracted a record-breaking 850,000 visitors and won the Art Fund's exhibition of the year award.[4] [5]

From 2008 to 2014 Portal was the Matsutaro Shoriki Chair of Asia, Oceania and Africa at the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, where she oversaw new galleries for South Asia, Oceania and Benin, as well as many Asian exhibitions. In December 2014, she returned to the British Museum, where she led the renovation and redisplay of the Sir Joseph Hotung Gallery of China and South Asia, opened by Queen Elizabeth II in November 2017, and oversaw the redisplay of the Mitsubishi Corporation Japanese Galleries, which re-opened in 2018.[6]

Selected publications

External links

Notes and References

  1. Web site: Collections Online British Museum . www.britishmuseum.org.
  2. Web site: Jane Portal The Clore Leadership Programme . www.cloreleadership.org.
  3. Yonsei News, issue 34, 16 June 2009. http://www.yonsei.kr/ocx_en/news.jsp Retrieved 25 March 2021.
  4. Web site: https://www.culture24.org.uk/sector-info/art57182 . www.culture24.org.uk . 25 March 2021.
  5. Web site: Jane Portal . eaa.fas.harvard.edu . 25 March 2021.
  6. Web site: Philip Attwood Left the British Museum After 41 Years . coinsweekly.com . 21 May 2020. 25 March 2021.