Lena Kim

Lena Kim (Kim Ri-na, 김리나, 金理那, 1942–present) was one of the first Koreans to obtain a PhD degree in art history from the Department of Fine Arts at Harvard.She was an esteemed professor of Korean and Buddhist art at Hongik University from 1976 until she retired in 2007. Over the course of her career, Kim helped establish art history as a discipline in South Korean academia through her research, mentoring, and activities in scholarly communities in Korea and beyond.[1]

Kim was born on January 30, 1942, in Seoul. Her parents were both highly-educated professionals who led cosmopolitan lives that were rather remarkable for their times. Her mother, Lee Chai-hy (Yi Ch’ae-hŭi, 이채희, 李彩熙, 1915–2002), was a physician specializing in pediatrics. After completing her education in her hometown in South Hamgyŏng Province, Yi traveled to Japan to attend the prestigious Tokyo Women’s Medical School (동경여자의학전문학교 東京女子醫學專門學校; now Tokyo Women’s Medical University), which was established in 1900.[2] After graduating in 1939, Lee returned to Korea and worked at a public hospital in Haeju, Hwanghae Province. She became the second president of the Korean Medical Woman’s Association in 1958 and later, joined the National Institute of Health as the Director of Maternal and Child Health in 1970.[3]

Kim’s father, Chewon Kim (Kim Chae-wŏn, 김재원, 金載元, 1909–1990), was an archaeologist who became the first director of the National Museum of Korea in 1945.[4] While his future wife-to-be traveled across the ocean to study abroad in Japan, Kim took the Trans-Siberian railroad across the Eurasian continent to attend university in Germany after graduating from Hamhŭng Upper Normal School in 1927. He obtained his bachelor and doctorate degrees from the Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (Munich University).[5] To cultivate greater expertise in archaeology, Kim moved to Antwerp in Belgium to work as an assistant for Sinologist Carl Hentze (1883–1975) at Ghent State University in 1934.[6] Kim was one of the few Koreans living in Western Europe during the twenties and thirties, which were a turbulent time for not just European countries, but also the world. As he studied, worked, and traveled, he witnessed the rise to power of the Nazi Party in Germany, growth of fascism in Italy, and finally, the outbreak of the Second World War. As the war intensified, Kim left Belgium in 1940 and returned to Korea, which was also embroiled in the war as a colony of the Japanese empire.[7] Once in Seoul, Kim worked as an instructor at Bosung College (Posŏng chŏnmun hakkyo 보성전문학교 普成專門學校). He met his future wife Lee through a friend, and soon after, the two were married in 1941. A year later, they welcomed their first child, Lena Kim.

Lena Kim spent her childhood in a home full of art, history, and artifacts due to her father’s career path after the end of Japanese colonial rule. In 1945, Kim’s father became the first director of the National Museum of Korea, which was newly established to replace the colonial-era Government General Art Museum of Korea. He spearheaded the museum’s transformation into a prestigious institution and promoted Korean arts globally until his retirement in 1970. Since the museum was inside Kyŏngbok Palace between 1945 and 1950, Kim’s family lived in the official residence for the museum director located within the palace. Kim freely roamed the palace and explored the museum’s collections with her younger sister. Her youngest sister, Kim Youngna (Kim Yŏng-na, 김영나, 金英那) who later became the director of the National Museum of Korea in 2011, was born in 1951.

Kim entered primary school at the nearby Susong Elementary School in 1948. In a matter of two years and a few months into her school years, however, the Korean War broke out on June 25, 1950. Her family evacuated to Pusan, the temporary capital.[8] The Kim family returned to Seoul after the armistice in 1953. After graduating from elementary school in 1954, Kim attended the prestigious Kyŏnggi Girls’ Middle and High School from 1954 to 1960. During her youth, Kim learned English first from her father and later, at private academies (hagwŏn). She later joined English clubs that were popping up in Seoul across different middle and high schools. For her extracurriculars, Kim joined the art club at her school, learning to draw watercolor and oil paintings. As Kim contemplated her future in university, her father encouraged her to consider art history based on her interests and his keen observation that art history was a rich area of study that was becoming more open to women internationally. Moreover, scholars trained as art historians were urgently needed in South Korea to establish Korean art as a tradition and category that was connected but distinct from Chinese and Japanese art.

Kim took her father’s advice to heart. She applied to and was accepted to Seoul National University in the spring of 1960. Since art history did not exist as a stand-alone department or discipline at the time, but subsumed under different departments, Kim decided to major in history with her larger goal in mind: studying Korean art and learning about art history. She constructed her own curriculum consisting of courses relevant to art history that were spread out across the archaeology, aesthetics, and history departments. For her thesis, she set out to write about the eminent Chosŏn-era landscape painter, Chŏng Sŏn (정선, 鄭敾, 1676–1759), and his works. As part of her methodology, she learned to observe his works in person at different museums and take black-and-white photographs of them for her analysis.[9]

Kim graduated from university in 1964 with hopes of studying art history in a more specialized way. Since there were no graduate programs exclusively for art history in South Korea at the time, Kim decided to pursue her education abroad. She applied and was accepted to the PhD program of the Department of Fine Arts (now the Department of History of Art and Architecture) at the Harvard Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (GSAS) in 1964.

Along with being one of the first people from South Korea to study abroad for art history, Kim was part of the earliest cohorts of female students to enroll at Harvard GSAS. Kim’s graduate career at Harvard overlapped with the start of the university’s path toward coeducation. When Kim arrived in Cambridge in 1964, it had been only two years since Harvard GSAS started accepting women.[10] The Radcliffe Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, which was founded in 1934[11] as a separate institution for women pursuing graduate studies, merged with Harvard GSAS in 1962.[12] This change formalized a long-standing reality that Radcliffe graduate students had always been advised by Harvard faculty and took coursework with male cohorts. Due to these realities at the graduate level, Harvard’s graduate schools moved toward coeducation much earlier than the College.[13] As one example, Radcliffe College students were banned from Lamont Library (built in 1949 for undergraduates) until 1967.[14] Undergraduate education became coed at the institutional level starting in 1975 when admissions for the College and Radcliffe College were merged and finally, the two colleges were fully merged in 1999.[15]

In the 1964–65 academic year when Kim started, Harvard GSAS accepted 274 female graduate students and 760 male counterparts for a total incoming class of 1,034 students.[16] These figures represented a steady increase in both the number of women and the total student population since 1962.[17] That year, the Department of Fine Arts had a graduate student cohort of 65 students with 41 women. This community was a midsize class when compared to those of other departments in GSAS, but it stood out in that women composed more than half the group.[18] Kim was the only student from South Korea in the department admitted that year as well as in the years prior.

Although the programs were coeducational, graduate student housing remained separate.[19] Kim lived in a Radcliffe dormitory for a few years until she moved off campus with her friends. Her roommates were mostly international students like herself who were working toward their doctorate in French literature, art history, and political science. To deal with homesickness, each person cooked dishes from their own hometown for shared meals. When she missed Asian food, Kim occasionally went to a Chinese restaurant in Harvard Square after studying at the Fine Arts library, which was then located in the basement of the Fogg Art Museum (now, the brick building with the main entrance to the Harvard Art Museum).[20]

While these changes in coeducation took place across the university, the Department of Fine Arts provided a stimulating and nurturing environment for Kim to gain specialized training in art history. She worked closely with her advisors, Professor John Max Rosenfield who specialized in Japanese art and Professor Max Loehr whose expertise lay in ancient Chinese art. At the time, there were no courses about Korean art, but this turned out to be an advantage for Kim as an art historian. She took seminars about the history, arts, and artifacts of diverse regions, such as Japan, China, India, Greece, and Western Europe, in different time periods that provided her with rigorous training to think and analyze comparatively.[21] For her language requirements, she learned Japanese and French while living in France and traveling across Europe. Along with Widener and the Fine Arts library, Kim drew from the rare materials and books at the Harvard-Yenching Library, which had been growing thanks to the Korean collection librarian, Kim Sŏng-ha. As she finished her coursework, prepared for exams, and conducted research, Kim revised her undergraduate thesis into an English-language article, which was published in Apollo in 1968.[22]

After passing the qualifying exams, Kim decided to write her dissertation about Buddhist sculptures from the Unified Silla Dynasty (668–935). She became interested in this topic through her coursework, particularly a graduate seminar called, “Problems in Ancient Art,” taught by Professor David Mitten, and from learning about Indian Buddhist art with Professor Benjamin Rowland. Kim saw a chance to analyze Korean Buddhist art comparatively due to the flourishing of Buddhism during Unified Silla’s rule and Buddhism’s transregional development across Asia.

For her dissertation, she conducted extensive fieldwork in South Korea, India, and Japan. She went to Seoul to observe and photograph Buddhist sculptures held at the various museums and traveled to relevant monasteries and sites across Korea. On the way back to Cambridge, she stopped in India to stay for a month. She visited important Buddhist sites and monuments: Bodh Gaya, Ruins of Nalanda Mahavihara, Sarnath, and Ajanta Caves among others. Her fieldwork in India helped expand and enrich the comparative range of her research beyond China and Japan. She had traveled to Japan multiple times during her graduate studies, visiting temples and photographing sculptures held there, although China back then was off-limit.[23] Kim conducted such multi-country fieldwork in her mid-twenties, which was—and still is—not easy for an early-career graduate student. Luckily and thankfully, her family provided her with a strong support system. Her father, in particular, was pivotal. Since he himself traveled extensively since his early twenties, Kim’s father provided her with travel guides and connected her with trusted friends and colleagues in each country to ease her transition into a new area.

As she wrote her dissertation, Kim also collaborated with her father and archaeologist Yun Mu-byŏng (윤무병 尹武炳, 1924–2010) to produce an edited volume devoted to Korean art. They published Arts of Korea (Kankoku bijutsu 韓国美術) in Japanese in 1970. The Korean version (Han’guk misul 韓國美術) was printed in 1973. The English edition (1974) required a total rewrite to suit a more international audience. Kim and her father wrote the English text anew with help from Robert Griffing Jr., director of the Honolulu Academy of Arts (now the Honolulu Museum of Art). Along with her editorial contributions to the manuscript for each edition, Kim wrote the sections about Buddhist sculptures and painting, which were praised by art historians in Japan.[24]

Kim completed her dissertation in 1972. It was titled, “Korean Buddhist Sculpture of the Unified Silla Dynasty (AD 668–935),” and consisted of two volumes: one with the text and the other containing the appendix and photographs. Her work provided an astute analysis of the stylistic development and changes in iconography of Unified Silla Buddhist sculptures, going several steps further to elucidate their relationship with Chinese and Japanese sculptures and their role in the development of Buddhist culture across East, Southeast, and Central Asia. With such an extensive and rich dissertation, Kim earned her doctorate degree from Harvard in May 1972.

Kim’s life at Harvard outside her research and program was both full and fulfilling. In 1967, while she worked toward her degree, Kim married Ryang Lee (Yi Ryang, 李亮, 1941–present) whom she had known since her college days. He was her classmate at Seoul National University studying political science and international relations. Lee joined Kim at Harvard as a fellow graduate student after entering the master’s program for area studies, Regional Studies East Asia (RSEA). He continued onto a PhD program in political science at Georgetown University and later became a South Korean diplomat. They held their wedding at a chapel on campus. Afterwards, John King Fairbank hosted a reception for the happy couple at his home, which was attended by family and friends, including Edwin O. Reischauer. Kim and Lee welcomed their daughter in 1971 and two years later, their son.[25]

After graduating from Harvard, Kim completed a postdoctoral program through the Smithsonian Institute. She was in residence at the Freer Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. for a year. Kim returned to Seoul in 1973. She began her academic career at her alma mater, Seoul National University, as a lecturer. In 1976, Kim accepted a tenure-track position at Hongik University’s Aesthetics and Art History Department, which was then one of the few institutions offering a graduate-level program for art history. She became the expert on Buddhist art—sculptures in particular. She continuously innovated her approach of situating Korean Buddhist art in wider comparative perspectives, expanding the boundaries of her own research by putting Korean art history in conversation with different fields, such as Silk Road studies.[26] In many ways, her education and experiences at Harvard formed the foundations for her sophisticated ability for comparative analysis, which required going beyond noticing similarities. She emphasized the importance of cultivating an eye for identifying subtle differences amidst similarities across artworks and pieces from different regions.

At Hongik University, Kim trained the next generation of art historians with care and rigor, encouraging them to explore and articulate their intellectual identities. According to Professor Han Chŏng-ḫi, one of her former graduate students and art historian, Kim was known for her willingness to engage with students’ research and her extensive written feedback on students’ papers. Some pages were even beautiful, exemplifying the “art of proof-reading” (kyojŏng ŭi yesul).[27] Within South Korean academia, Kim played a pivotal role in developing a scholarly community for art history as one of the founding members of the Korean Association of Art History Education (est. 1986), serving as its president in 1991. She led several other organizations as their president, including The Association of Art History (est. 1986) and Art History Association of Korea (est. 1960). Outside the scholarly community, Kim worked with various museums, including the National Museum of Korea and Gyeonggi Province Museum, and the South Korean government’s Cultural Heritage Administration to promote Korean art to a wider public.

Along with her activities in South Korea, Kim advocated for the study and value of Korean art internationally. She served as a research consultant for the Metropolitan Museum of Art between 1978 and 1980 and as a visiting professor at the University of Zürich in 1989 for a year. Between 1999 and 2006, she promoted the protection and conservation of cultural heritage sites in South Korea at an international level as a board member for the Korean National Committee of the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS), a non-governmental organization serving as an advisory body to the World Heritage Committee, the UNESCO World Heritage Centre, and governments. She accomplished all this, moreover, at a time when academia and the professoriate were still male-dominated.

Kim retired in 2007 after her long career as a professor of art history at Hongik University. In celebration of Kim’s contributions to the field, her students organized the publication of an edited volume, Tradition and Interpretation of Visual Culture: Collection of Essays in Celebration of Chŏngjae Kim Lena’s Retirement (Sigak munhwa ŭi chŏnt’ong kwa haesŏk: Chŏngjae Kim Rina kyosu chŏngnyŏn t’oeim kinyŏm misulsa nonmunjip).

The number of contributing authors and breadth of topics covered in the volume reflected the immense impact of Kim’s teaching, research, and endeavors on art history in South Korea as a whole. Twenty-nine authors consisting of her former students—many of whom had gone onto teach at universities themselves or work as curators in many museums—and her art history colleagues in South Korea, Japan, and China wrote research essays about Buddhist art, craft art, Korean traditional painting, modern and contemporary art, and Western art. The work attested to Kim’s pioneering role as an art historian who opened up and mapped “a new scholarly topography” (saeroun hangmunjŏk chihyŏngdo) for Korean art history and her eminent position in art history within and beyond South Korea.[28] Since her retirement, Kim has continued producing research and supporting students—or “junior scholars” (huhak) as she refers to them—remaining devoted to the pursuit and production of knowledge.

Written by Sujin Elisa Han, 4/10/2025

Endnotes

[1] This biography is based on an interview with Lena Kim and her sister, Kim Youngna (Kim Yŏng-na), conducted by Sun Joo Kim on May 23, 2024, in Seoul. We’d like to thank both Lena and Youngna Kim for sharing their life stories.

[2] The majority of Korean female physicians who received their medical education during Japanese colonial rule (1910–1945) studied abroad due to limited educational opportunities for women in general and for medical training for Koreans in Korea. For women, Tokyo Women’s Medical School was a top choice. Dr. Hŏ Yŏng-suk (graduated in 1917) whose husband was famed writer Yi Kwang-su was one of the many exceptional Korean graduates of Tokyo Women’s Medical School. A handful of women obtained their medical education at Keijō Imperial College in Korea in the 1940s. For more on female medical education and physicians, see Ŭiryo Chŏngch’aek Yŏn’guso [Research Institute for Healthcare Policy], “Uri nara kŭnhyŏndae yŏsŏngsa esŏ yŏŭisa ŭi hwaltong kwa sahoejŏk wisang: Pak Esŭdŏ ihu sidae ŭi chidoja ro hwaryakhan yŏsŏng ŭisa ŭi sahoe hwaltong ŭl chungsim ŭro” [The Activities and Social Stature of Female Physicians in the Modern and Contemporary Women’s History of Korea: The Social Activities of Female Physicians in the Generation after Esther Park who were active as Leaders] (research report, Seoul, 2012).

[3] “Posabu insa” [Personnel of the Ministry of Health and Social Affairs], Maeil kyŏngje, February 25, 1970.

[4] For basic information, see “Kim Chaewŏn” [Kim Chewon] in Han’guk minjok munhwa taebaekkwa sajŏn [Encyclopedia of Korean Culture]. https://encykorea.aks.ac.kr/Article/E0010346.

[5] Kim Chewon’s time in Germany coincided with the turbulent shift between the Weimar Republic and Third Reich following Hitler’s appointment as chancellor in 1933. For more about Kim’s experiences in Europe, please refer to his memoir: Kim Chewon [Kim Chae-wŏn], Pangmulgwan kwa hanp’yŏngsaeng [A Lifetime with the Museum] (Seoul: T’amgudang, 1992).

[6] Hentze was one of the founders of the journal, Artibus Asiae. For more on Hentze in the longer history of Sinology in Belgium, refer to Nicolas Standaert, “History of Sinology in Belgium Until the Open-Door Policy of the Late 1970s,” Journal of Chinese History 7, no. 2 (2023): 409–42. For more about him in the context of Chinese studies in Germany, see Hans van Ess, “History of Pre-Modern Chinese Studies in Germany,” Journal of Chinese History 7, no. 2 (2023): 491–524.

[7] Kim, Pangmulgwan kwa hanp’yŏngsaeng 54–69.

[8] Her father was responsible for moving the collections of the National Museum and others nearby from Seoul to Pusan. His efforts and the cooperation of museum employees at the time were critical to protecting art pieces and artifacts from destruction, looting, and confiscation during the war. For more on this gripping story, please refer to Kim, Pangmulgwan kwa hanp’yŏngsaeng, 115–29.

[9] Kim Lena, “Na ŭi misulsa yŏn’gu hoego” [Looking Back at My Studies in Art History], in Chŏngjae Kim Rina Kyosu Chŏngnyŏn T’oeim Kinyŏm Misulsa Nonmunjip Kanhaeng Wiwŏnhoe, ed., Sigak munhwa ŭi chŏnt’ong kwa haesŏk: Chŏngjae Kim Lena kyosu chŏngnyŏn t’oeim kinyŏm misulsa nonmunjip [Tradition and Interpretation of Visual Culture: Collection of Essays in Celebration of Chŏngjae Kim Lena’s Retirement] (Seoul: Yekong, 2007) (Sigak munhwa ŭi chŏnt’ong kwa haesŏk, hereafter), 21.

[10] “Harvard Griffin GSAS History,” Harvard Griffin GSAS News, Harvard Kenneth C. Griffin Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, https://gsas.harvard.edu/news/harvard-griffin-gsas-history.

[11] “Radcliffe Timeline,” The Crimson, April 21, 1999.

[12] Robert E. Smith, “Harvard, Radcliffe Move to Merge Arts & Sciences Graduate Schools: Dean Favors Combined Doctoral Programs; Faculty May Take Up Issue Next Month,” The Crimson, October 22, 1961. For more on the relationship between Radcliffe and Harvard, please refer to “It’s Complicated: 375 Years of Women at Harvard,” Harvard Radcliffe Institute Events & Exhibitions, Harvard Radcliffe Institute, https://www.radcliffe.harvard.edu/event/2012-its-complicated-exhibition.

[13] The Harvard University Archives explains, “The Harvard Graduate School of Education was the first to admit women in 1920. The Harvard Medical School accepted its first female enrollees in 1945, although a woman had first applied almost 100 years earlier, in 1847. A special meeting of the President and Fellows of Harvard College on August 14 concluded that “the corporation do not deem it advisable to alter the existing regulations of the Medical School, which imply that the students are exclusively of the male sex.” Women began petitioning the Harvard Law School for admittance in 1871, but were not admitted until 1950.” For more, refer to “Women at Harvard University,” Harvard University Archives Research Guides, Harvard Library, https://guides.library.harvard.edu/c.php?g=1108872&p=8085578.

[14] Even after 1967, women were required to enter Lamont using a separate entrance. An article from The Crimson explains the reason for this caveat: “The committee tried to minimize the female distraction by requiring Radcliffe students to enter through the West Entrance, in the building's basement, and restricting coed classes to the sixth level.” Brooke A. Masters, “When the Cliffies Finally Conquered Lamont,” The Crimson, April 18, 1986.

[15] Prior to the merger of the classrooms, which came in 1946, professors had to teach the same course twice: once at Harvard and then again at Radcliffe. One article from The Crimson explains the situation as of 1961: “Since the time when Harvard professors gave their lectures in the Yard and trudged across the Common to offer identical classes at Radcliffe, Harvard and Radcliffe have merged closer together. Now, only administration and admissions remain separate.” Smith, “Harvard, Radcliffe Move to Merge,” The Crimson, October 22, 1961.

[16] Harvard University, Report of the President of Harvard College and Reports of Departments, 1964-1965 (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Published by the University, 1965), 112. https://iiif.lib.harvard.edu/manifests/view/drs:427268814$114i.

[17] For the three years since the merger, there were more than 1,300 women enrolled at GSAS with the majority of them (612) working toward their PhD in the Arts and Sciences, followed by the School of Education (204), teaching program for a Master of Arts (164), Law (79), Medicine (36), Public Health (30), School of Design (26), Business Administration (22), and Divinity (13). Radcliffe College, Report of the Acting President, 1964–1965 (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Published by the University, 1965), 11. https://iiif.lib.harvard.edu/manifests/view/drs:2573641$223i.

[18] Harvard University, Report of the President of Harvard College and Reports of Departments, 1964–1965, 127–28. https://iiif.lib.harvard.edu/manifests/view/drs:427268814$129i.

[19] The College phased in coed housing from 1970 in response to student protests, which came at a time of widespread student demonstrations and unrest across universities. Victoria E. M. Caine, “Coed Dorms: First Stage of the Merger,” The Crimson, June 6, 1995.

[20] There were several Asian restaurants around campus in the early 1970s, including Hong Kong. “A Glutton’s Guide to Harvard Square & Environs,” The Crimson, September 16, 1974.

[21] The courses offered by each department, including Fine Arts, can be found in the Courses of Instruction for Harvard and Radcliffe, which the University published every year. Harvard University, Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Courses of Instruction for Harvard and Radcliffe, 1965–1966 (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Published by the University, 1965), 172. https://iiif.lib.harvard.edu/manifests/view/drs:490295935$174i. 

[22] Lena Kim-Lee, “Chŏng Son: A Korean Landscape Painter,” Apollo 88 (1968): 84–93.

[23] Kim, “Na ŭi misulsa yŏn’gu hoego,” 23.

[24] Kim, Pangmulgwan kwa hanp’yŏngsaeng, 214.

[25] Kim’s father Chewon Kim was acquainted with both Professors Fairbank and Reischauer since he was active as the head of the Korean Council of the Harvard-Yenching Institute. Kim, Pangmulgwan kwa hanp’yŏngsaeng, 153-159.

[26] Kwŏn O-sŏng, “Haesang Silk’ŭ Rodŭ taet’amsa <10> Silla yujŏk edo ‘Sŏyŏk’ ŭi sumgyŏl” [Great Investigation of the Maritime Silk Road <10> Touches of Western Regions’ Influence in Silla Relics], Tonga ilbo, April 15, 1991.

[27] Han Chŏng-hŭi, “Kanhaengsa” [Publisher’s Note], in Sigak munhwa ŭi chŏnt’ong kwa haesŏk, 7.

[28] The phrase (“a new scholarly topography”) was cited from the “Publisher’s Note” written by Han Chŏng-hŭi for the volume when she describes the impact of Kim’s research on the field. Han, “Kanhaengsa,” 6.