Soyoung Lee

Soyoung Lee is an art historian and curator. She is the Barbara Bass Director and CEO of the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco.

Biography Lee was born in Jakarta, where her father was a Korean diplomat tasked with promoting Korean art and culture, and has lived in Stockholm, London, Los Angeles, Seoul, and Tokyo. She received her B.A., M.A., and Ph.D., all from Columbia University. Her doctoral thesis examined the influence of 15th-16th century Korean ceramics on the ceramic industries in Kyushu, Japan. Her research has focused on cross-cultural exchanges in East Asian Art. At the Met, she has curated the exhibitions such as Art of the Korean Renaissance, 1400–1600 (2009); Poetry in Clay: Korean Buncheong Ceramics from the Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art (2011); Silla: Korea’s Golden Kingdom (2014); and Diamond Mountains: Travel and Nostalgia in Korean Art (2018).

Lee served as the Met's Forum of Curators, Conservators, and Scientists in 2016–17 and a trustee of the Association of Art Museum Curators. While at Harvard, she co-curated exhibitions such as Future Minded: New Works in the Collection (2024) and Earthly Delights: 6,000 Years of Asian Ceramics (2022) while leading the institution's collections-building and its training program for aspiring museum professionals.