Early goals set for Harvard Art Museums’ new curator
When Soyoung Lee takes the reins as the Harvard Art Museums’ chief curator in September, she will be joining the institution at a vibrant time. “The Harvard Art Museums have this incredible history,” said Lee, speaking by phone from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, where she is currently curator in the Department of Asian Art. In 2014, she noted, the museums “opened this expanded, renovated, beautiful building and brought the three museums [the Fogg, Busch-Reisinger, and Arthur M. Sackler] together, which is an amazing feat. What are the next steps? Where are the Harvard Art Museums going through the 21st century? To think of that big picture, about institutional priorities, institutional direction, is really exciting.” For Lee, who has spent the last 15 years at the Metropolitan, the challenges of a teaching museum won’t be entirely foreign. At the Met, in addition to serving as the museum’s first curator...