The Peabody Essex Museum has approximately 1,800 pieces of Korean art in its collection, including ceramics, textiles, and painted screens. The collection began in 1883, as the result of a collaboration between museum director Edward Sylvester Morse and Korean scholar Yu Kil-chun, who was a member of the first official Korean delegation to the United States. Much of the collection consists of art of the Joseon Dynasty, which occupied the transitional period between the traditional Korean empire and modernity. Many of the pieces in the collection, particularly those from the Joseon period, display the centrality of art in the habits, rituals, and ceremonies of everyday Korean life. As former PEM curator Susan S. Bean observes, art objects were "essential to the conduct of social life because they conveyed values, fulfilled wishes, provided access to deities and ancestors, taught lessons and conferred prestige."