Sumi Lee Appointed as New Director of National Gwangju Museum

An Expert Who Has Held Key Positions Including Head of the Art Department at the National Museum of Korea

[Asia Economy Honam Reporting Headquarters, Reporter Yoon Jamin] Lee Sumi has been appointed as the new director of the National Gwangju Museum.

According to the National Gwangju Museum on the 1st, the new director is a museum expert who worked for 25 years at the National Museum of Korea, holding key positions such as Director of Education and Head of the Art Department.

As an art historian specializing in painting history, she graduated from the Department of Archaeology and Art History at Seoul National University in 1988 and earned her master's and doctoral degrees from the same graduate school.

In 2018, she successfully organized the special exhibition "Great Goryeo, The Brilliant Challenge," which comprehensively examined Goryeo art to commemorate the 1100th anniversary of the founding of Goryeo, greatly contributing to promoting the global value of Goryeo culture.

She also planned numerous notable exhibitions both domestically and internationally, including "Portraits of Kings, Gyeonggijeon and Taejo Yi Seong-gye" (2005), "Return After 145 Years, Uigwe from Oegyujanggak" (2011), "Art in the City, City in Art" (2016), and "Drawing Our Landscape - The Painter's Perspective, Realistic Landscape Paintings of the Joseon Dynasty" (2019).

Her major papers include "Expanding the Understanding of Sixteenth-Century Realistic Landscape Paintings: Focusing on and ," "Visualizing Dreams, Painting Utopian Landscapes," "Two Processes in Portrait Production in Late Joseon: Draft Production and Color Application," and "The Formal Characteristics and Enshrinement Meaning of Taejo's Royal Portrait at Gyeonggijeon."

Director Lee stated, "We plan to establish the new brand that the National Gwangju Museum is focusing on, the Asian Ceramic Culture Silk Road Hub Project, to create a new vision and identity for the museum. To this end, we will concentrate our efforts on making the National Gwangju Museum an internationally recognized institution representing Asian ceramic culture by promoting the 700th anniversary of the departure of the Sinan Ship by 2023."

She added, "We will also strive to revitalize local culture by cooperating with local governments, public and private museums, and art galleries. Based on the pride of being the first museum established by our own hands after liberation, we will do our best to smoothly fulfill our role as the central institution of Honam culture."

This content was produced with the assistance of AI translation services.