Seunghye Lee

Seunghye Lee is an art historian specializing in Korean visual and material culture within broader East Asian and Buddhist networks. Her research examines how sacred objects, devotional practices, and artistic ideas moved across regions and historical periods, taking on distinct forms and meanings in Korea. Her scholarship encompasses Buddhist art and architecture, women’s art production and patronage, collecting and display practices, and cross-cultural exchanges from medieval to modern periods.

Lee has published extensively in peer-reviewed journals, edited volumes, and museum catalogs. She co-edited a special issue of Cahiers d’Extrême-Asie on Korean Buddhist consecration, which laid the groundwork for her current book project, Charged Within: The Making of Buddhist Images in Koryŏ Korea. The book examines how Buddhist images were materially and ritually constituted through object installation, drawing on their hidden contents to reconsider what makes an image sacred and meaningful to those who commission it.

Prior to joining UCLA, Lee spent more than a decade curating Korean Buddhist art at the Leeum Museum of Art and Hoam Museum of Art (2014–2025). There, she organized special exhibitions, including Unsullied, Like a Lotus in Mud (2024), the first major show to examine East Asian Buddhist art through a gender lens. She previously taught at Dong-A University, where she also served as Director of the Seokdang Museum of Art (2025–2026), following research and teaching positions at Dongguk University, Seoul National University, and Sookmyung Women’s University. Her research has been supported by the AmorePacific Foundation and the Korean Buddhism Promotion Foundation, among others.

At UCLA, Lee teaches ancient through contemporary Korean art and visual culture across diverse media. Her courses cover religious art and material culture, relics and reliquaries, painting and print traditions, women in art, court art and culture, Korea’s artistic encounter with modernity, and interregional exchanges within East Asia.