Art historian Joan Kee has been announced as the next director of New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts. She will step into her new role on August 19. Currently a professor of the history of art at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, Kee is an expert in modern and contemporary art of Asia and the United States. She holds a law degree from Harvard and a Ph.D. from the IFA.
References: this article is based on content originally published by News Desk on Artforum. You can read the full article here.
“In a field of wonderful candidates, Joan Kee distinguished herself through her remarkably expansive vision of art history and her ideas for productive, innovative, and interdisciplinary collaboration in art history across NYU,” said NYU president Linda G. Mills in a statement. “I am impressed by her ability to build bridges and support collaboration in art history across NYU, including with Arts and Science’s Department of Art History; her scholarly achievements; her views on how the Institute can shape the next generation of art historians; and her genuine love and appreciation for the IFA.”
References: this article is based on content originally published by News Desk on Artforum. You can read the full article here.
Kee specializes in art and the law, comparative diaspora studies, and art and digital communications. She has been credited with raising the profile of Korean abstraction, particularly that created as part of the Tansaekhwa movement active in the 1970s and ’80s. She is the author of The Geometries of Afro Asia: Art beyond Solidarity, which won the 2024 Robert Motherwell Book Award; Models of Integrity: Art and Law in Post Sixties America (2019); and Contemporary Korean Art: Tansaekhwa and the Urgency of Method (2013). Kee joined the faculty of the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor as an assistant professor in the history of art; she was appointed full professor there in 2019. She previously worked for the firms Simpson Thatcher and Bartlett and, earlier, Hughes Hubbard and Reed. Kee is a contributing editor of Artforum and editor-at-large for the Brooklyn Rail. In addition to the abovementioned degrees, she holds a BA in the history of art from Yale University, from which she graduated magna cum laude.
References: this article is based on content originally published by News Desk on Artforum. You can read the full article here.
“It is a tremendous privilege to return to the IFA, a truly vigorous intergenerational art community that has opened up many vibrant worlds,” said Kee in a statement. “It is a further privilege still to join the IFA and its many exciting possibilities of collaboration and engagement with NYU, New York City, and the world.”
References: this article is based on content originally published by News Desk on Artforum. You can read the full article here.
