Ja Won Lee Faculty Profile
Ja Won Lee
Associate Professor
Department of Art
- E-mail: jawon.lee@csueastbay.edu
- Phone: (510) 885-4842
- Office: AE 1215A
- Office Hours: On leave 2025/26
Ja Won Lee is an art historian specializing in the visual and material culture of Korea, with research interests in collecting, gender, antiquarianism, and cross-cultural exchange between Asia and the West. Her work examines how collecting practices shaped identity and artistic production in late Chosŏn Korea, and has been supported by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Columbia University’s Mary Griggs Burke Center for Japanese Art, and the Harvard-Yenching Institute.
Trained in ink painting, calligraphy, and art history, Lee received her PhD from UCLA and has taught at Columbia University, UCLA, and the University of Hong Kong. She has also worked on exhibitions and conservation at major institutions including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Frankfurt Museum for Applied Art, and Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art.
Ja Won Lee is currently at work on a monograph, Crossing Cultures: Collecting and Representing Chinese Antiquities in Korea, which centers on antiquarianism and transcultural movements of Korea.
- PhD in Art History, University of California, Los Angeles
- MA in Art Theory, Seoul National University
- BFA in Korean Painting and BS in Textiles, Merchandising and Fashion Design, Seoul National University
Not teaching this semester.
2023. “Visualizing ‘National Art’: O Sech’ang’s Art Collection and Connoisseurship against Japanese Colonialism,” The Art Bulletin 105.4: 116–133. Refereed
2018. “Collecting Culture, Representing the Self: Chosŏn Portraits of Collectors of Chinese Antiquities,” Seoul Journal of Korean Studies 31: 1–20. Refereed
2017. “Der Antiken-Stellschirm des Museums für Völkerkunde Hamburg [Screens of Antiquities in the Museum of Ethnography in Hamburg],” in Uri Korea: Kunsthistorische und ethnografische Beiträge zur Ausstellung, edited by Susanne Knödel and Bernd Schmelz, 296–313. Hamburg: Museum für Völkerkunde of Hamburg.
“From Seoul to Hamburg: Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Korean Painting in Europe.” Global Asias 7 Conference, Pennsylvania State University, State College, PA, March 2025
“Visualizing the Past: Nineteenth-Century Korean Art Reconsidered.” Rethinking Art Historical Narratives and Canons Conference, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland, November 2023.
“Cultural Encounter: Embroideries, Chinese Antiquities, and Royal Court Women in Late Chosŏn Korea.” Korean Art and Gender Conference, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, September 2023.
“Picturing Culture: The Role of Chinese Illustrated Catalogs in Nineteenth-Century Korean Arts and Visual Culture.” Annual Conference of the College Art Association (CAA), New York, NY, February 2023.
Faculty Research, Scholarship, and Creative Activity Grant, CSU East Bay, 2025–2026
Luce/ACLS Early Career Fellowship in China Studies, American Council of Learned Societies, 2023–2024
Postdoctoral Fellowship, Mary Griggs Burke Center for Japanese Art, Columbia University, 2018–2019
Taiwan Studies Fellowship, Asia Pacific Center, UCLA, 2017–2018
Jane and Morgan Whitney Fellowship, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 2016–2017
Mellon Pre-dissertation Fellowship, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, 2015–2016
Edward A. Dickson History of Art Fellowship, Department of Art History, UCLA, 2014–2016
International Institute Fieldwork Fellowship, UCLA, 2014