Name: Artist Talk: Jongkuk Lee
Start: 2025-05-17T10:30:00-04:00
End: 2025-05-17T11:15:00-04:00
Location: Peabody Essex Museum

Saturday, May 17, 2025 from 10:30—11:15 am
In-person event
Location: Morse Auditorium
Included with admission
Reserve your tickets here: pem.org/events/artist-presentation-jongkuk-lee
Jongkuk Lee is a renowned Korean papermaking (hanji) master, as well as an artist and educator. Join us for a video presentation about his hanji practice and Q&A led by Curator Jiyeon Kim.
Lee grows and harvests his own paper mulberry trees for the hanji making process. He believes that in order to get to know an object, you need to spend enough time with it, observe it and slowly immerse yourself in it. The process of growing trees, peeling them and soaking them to make hanji demonstrates the symbiotic relationships humans can have with nature.
PEM’s Korean collection features many works made with paper, such as a paper sewing basket decorated with lacquer and mother of pearl (from before 1910) and a picnic set made with coiled paper (from before 1927). Other key works in PEM’s Korean Art gallery, such as an 18th-century hwarot (bridal robe) and 19th-century bowler hat, have paper filling and ornaments. Jongkuk Lee’s Paper Moon Jar (acquired by PEM in 2024) will be displayed along with historic Korean paper works to connect the past and present and demonstrate how traditional craft can be reinterpreted through an artist’s mastery of material.
This event is part of the opening weekend celebrations for PEM’s Korean Art gallery and Jung Yeondoo: Building Dreams.
Public programs with Jongkuk Lee are supported by the Overseas Korean Cultural Heritage Foundation, Korea.
About our Collaborator:
Jongkuk Lee
Jongkuk Lee is the current head of Mabuel Gallery and a nature artist who creates crafts using hanji (Korean paper) from his home-grown paper mulberry trees. He also utilizes other natural materials such as bamboo and silvergrass to talk about the environment. In the late 1990s, he settled in Bulat Village, a town in Cheongju, South Korea, famous for its hanji, and has been carrying on the tradition of hanji making ever since. Since the late 1970s, Bulat Village had been losing its tradition as the demand for hanji has decreased due to urbanization and industrial development, but Lee’s work has helped revitalize the village.
Jiyeon Kim
Jiyeon Kim is developing PEM’s new Korean Art gallery, opening in May 2025. Kim brings a wealth of knowledge and experience to this position, from her academic credentials earned from universities in Seoul, Indiana, New York and Los Angeles; to her teaching career in Korea and the U.S., including her most recent position at Montserrat College of Art in Beverly. In 2016 and 2017, she worked on PEM’s Korean collection as a project specialist.
Kim earned her Ph.D. in Korean Art History from the University of California, Los Angeles. Her recent research topics include social status and artistic identity, collecting history of Asian art in Boston area museums and gardens as social space. She actively participates in the cultural life of the Korean community in the greater Boston area and across New England.