A Joseon royal book screen in Paris — Musée Guimet, until 4 January 2027

A ten-panel Chaekgado screen from the National Palace Museum of Korea, part of the Korea Heritage Service, has gone to Paris. It is the one Korean loan from that museum to Knowledge in trompe-l'œil, Korea (18th–20th century) (16 September 2026 – 4 January 2027) at the Musée Guimet, France's national museum of Asian art. The exhibition is about chaekgeori — Korean paintings of books and scholars' objects — and how the genre began and spread.

When, and for how much, can you see it in Paris?

The exhibition is in the Rotunda on the second floor of the Musée Guimet (place d'Iéna, 16th arrondissement), and the museum puts the visit at about 45 minutes. There is no separate exhibition ticket: one combined ticket (€15 full price, €12 reduced) covers the permanent collections and the temporary shows. Under-18s go free; the exhibition page also says under-26s go free, which on the museum's pricing page applies to EU nationals aged 18–25. Everyone gets in free on the first Sunday of each month.

What is this screen?

A chaekgado is a painting of bookshelves and scholars' things; the wider genre is also called chaekgeori. The Korea Heritage Service explains that it developed in the late eighteenth century, under King Jeongjo, when Western perspective met Joseon painting, and that Jeongjo set a chaekgado screen behind his throne in 1791 and encouraged its production. This screen, ink and colour on silk, leaves out the vases, incense burners and brushes that fill most chaekgado: across ten panels it shows three tiers of shelves holding nothing but books. The Korea Heritage Service describes it as a treasured object that stands for the Joseon court's devotion to learning.

The Musée Guimet has named 2026 its Year of Korea (Une année K-arrément Corée!) and is running Korean exhibitions through it. Earlier this year (18 March – 6 July) the National Palace Museum of Korea lent 26 royal objects, among them a mother-of-pearl comb case, to the Guimet's K-Beauty exhibition, so this is its second loan to the museum in a single year.

What else is in the exhibition?

According to the Musée Guimet's press kit the exhibition brings together more than 75 works. Lenders include, in Seoul, the National Museum of Korea, the National Palace Museum of Korea, the National Folk Museum of Korea and the Leeum Museum of Art, and in Paris the Louvre and the Bibliothèque nationale de France, alongside the Guimet's own Korean collection. A painted scroll of more than five metres from the eighteenth (or early nineteenth) century, showing a Korean embassy in Beijing, is shown for the first time after restoration, and the museum says a self-portrait by a Joseon painter designated a National Treasure is included. The exhibition follows the route by which the perspective that Jesuit painters brought to the Qing court reached Korea through its envoys and turned into chaekgado.

Other chaekgado you can see in Korea

The four works below are not in the exhibition. They are chaekgado from the National Museum of Korea's collection, chosen to show how varied the genre is. Where the screen in Paris shows only books, these put porcelain, vases and writing things on the shelves between them.

Why do the sources disagree on its date and size?

Korean coverage leads with King Jeongjo and the eighteenth century, but the eighteenth century is the background of the genre and of the exhibition's first section — it has not been announced as the date of this screen. The screen's own date is given separately in the Musée Guimet's press kit.

Getting there, and what to expect on the day

The Musée Guimet is at 6 place d'Iéna in the 16th arrondissement — the nearest metro stations are Iéna and Boissière. Buying a ticket needs nothing a visitor from abroad would not have: the online ticket site takes an ordinary bank card (not American Express), and you can also buy at the desk on the day. The show is small — the museum suggests 45 minutes — so it fits easily beside the permanent Korean galleries on the same ticket. The museum publishes an English exhibition page and an eight-page English visit guide to download before you go; it has not said whether the wall texts are bilingual, so the guide is the safe bet. Remember the Tuesday closure, and that wheeled suitcases are turned away, which matters if you are heading straight from a train.