Staff Profile

Soyoung Lee joined the Harvard Art Museums as the Landon and Lavinia Clay Chief Curator in 2018. Her areas of expertise and research interests include Korean and Japanese ceramics from 1400 to 1700 and issues of cross-cultural exchange in East Asia. Before arriving at the museums, Lee served for 15 years as curator of Korean art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where she organized a number of critically acclaimed international loan exhibitions. At the Met, she was one of six curators on the organizing team for the exhibition Jewelry: The Body Transformed (2018–19). Her publications include Diamond Mountains: Travel and Nostalgia in Korean Art (2018), Silla: Korea’s Golden Kingdom (with Denise Patry Leidy; 2013), and Korean Buncheong Ceramics from the Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art (with Jeon Seung-chang; 2011). In 2016–17, Lee served as chair of the Metropolitan Museum’s Forum of Curators, Conservators, and Scientists, the academic body of the museum comprising more than 200 members. She was one of 12 fellows of the Center for Curatorial Leadership in 2018. At Columbia, her dissertation examined the influence and reception of ceramic industries from southern Korea to western Japan from the 15th through the 18th century. Born in Jakarta, Indonesia, Lee has lived in Seoul, Tokyo, Stockholm, London, Los Angeles, and New York.