The Asian Cultural Council, chaired by fifth-generation Rockefeller Wendy O’Neill, is celebrating 50 years of promoting cultural exchange between the U.S. and Asia.

As a guest speaker at a YEOL Society for Korean Cultural Heritage lecture held at the Asan Institute for Policy Studies in Seoul on Tuesday, O’Neill spoke of the family’s long-standing relationship with Asia, which can be traced back 150 years to when John D. Rockefeller gave a small donation to a missionary group in Korea in 1863.

The ACC is one of the many philanthropic organizations established by the Rockefeller family.

“We support cultural transmission with the United States,” O’Neill said. “It means that we bring artists and scholars to study with arts organizations (in Asia).”

The council, which was inaugurated by John D. Rockefeller III in 1963, also funds budding Asian visual and performing artists and musicians to travel to the U.S., where they visit museums, conduct research and participate in workshops and exhibitions of their work.

“We are also starting to do intra-Asia exchange, because as we know the cultures in Asia are very diverse,” O’Neill explained.

One beneficiary of the ACC, Yoo Duk-hyung, first received funding to study theater in the U.S. in 1966. He went on to serve as president of the Seoul Institute of Arts from 1978 until 1994.

“He said that if he hadn’t gone on the grant in 1966, he wouldn’t have gone to the Seoul Institute of the Arts,” O’Neill said.

Unfortunately, the ACC has had to decrease the number of Korean artists it sends abroad in recent years.

“In 1978, Johnny Rockefeller III died suddenly in a car crash, and he left a small endowment for us, but it is not enough for us to do as much as we would like to do,” O’Neill said.

“We have been able to find private donors in Japan and Hong Kong and Taipei and so we would love to find somebody here in Korea to help us.”

John D. Rockefeller founded the Standard Oil Company in 1870. In 2007, the New York Times declared him the richest man in history and the family has had a long history of philanthropy in medicine, education and the arts.

According to family records, in 1855, when John D. Rockefeller was 18-years-old, he received his first paycheck working as a bookkeeper.

“He gave away 2 dollars and 83 cents of that paycheck,” O’Neill said. “He was only making $18 at this time.”

By Lara Pearce, Intern reporter
(lara.a.pearce@gmail.com)