Bios

Jeong Eunwoo

Jeong Eunwoo received her MA and PhD in Buddhist Art History from Hongik University in Seoul. She is currently a professor in the Department of Archaeology and Art History at Dong-A University, a member of the Cultural Heritage Committee of Korea, and president of the Association of Art History. She previously served as a director of Seokdang Museum at Dong-A University and chair of the Korean Society of Art History. She actively studies Buddhist art history and has published numerous papers as well as several books, including A Study of Buddhist Sculptures in the Late Goryeo Dynasty and A Smile of Buddhist Sculpture (both in Korean).

Shin Soyeon

Shin Soyeon received her BA from the Department of Archaeology and Art History at Seoul National University and completed her PhD coursework after receiving her MA in Art History (Korean Buddhist Art) at the same university. She has worked as an associate curator at the Gongju National Museum (2004–2006) and the National Museum of Korea, Seoul (2007–present). She participated in the overseas Korean Gallery projects at the National Gallery of Prague and at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. She also organized the special exhibition Korean Art from the United States in 2012. Primarily interested in Goryeo and Joseon period Buddhist images, she initiated a research project focused on Buddhist sculpture in the collection of the National Museum of Korea in 2012 and led the project until 2016. Based on the research findings, she curated the special exhibition Devout Patrons of Buddhist Art (2015) and published research reports in 2014 and 2016.

Sim Yeon-Ok

Sim Yeon-Ok received her BA in Korean Textile History at Kookmin University and completed her PhD in Chinese Textile Technology at East China University (formerly the China Textile University) in Shanghai. She was a member of the Cultural Heritage Committee of Korea (2011–2013) and the Centre International d′Etude des Textiles Ancients (2004–2015) and is a visiting researcher at the Chinese Centre for Textile Identification and Conservation at the China National Silk Museum in Hangzhou (2000–present). A specialist in Asian textile history, she is currently a professor at Korea National University of Cultural Heritage and the director of the Institute of Traditional Textile Restoration. Her publications include History of Chinese Textiles (1998), Five Thousand Years of Korean Textiles (2002), Two Thousand Years of Korean Textile Design (2006), and Korean Traditional Braid and Knot (2006). She has also written over thirty articles on the history of Korean textiles and its techniques.

Park Youngman

Park Youngman received his MA in Waterlogged Archaeological Wood Conservation Studies from Chonnam National University (2010). He has been a conservator at the National Museum of Korea since 2002. His field of study is in waterlogged archaeological wood conservation and the identification of wood species. Park also has a special interest in the production of lacquerware and Buddhist sculptures of Korea. His current research focuses on various production techniques of Korean mother-of-pearl inlay artifacts.

Jeon Sangyong

Jeon Sangyong received his BA in Sculpture from Seoul National University in Korea and MAs from both École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts de Paris and Université de Paris VIII in France. Since 2001, he has trained in traditional wooden Buddhist sculpture making under his father Jeon Kiman, who is a Living National Treasure of Korean Cultural Heritage. Jeon Sangyong was designated as a certified trainee in 2009 and has had six solo exhibitions. He currently teaches courses on contemporary wood sculpture at Seoul National University and traditional wood sculpture at Korea National University of Cultural Heritage.

Lee Seunghye

Lee Seunghye holds a PhD in Art History from the University of Chicago with a specialty in Chinese and Korean Buddhist art and architecture. She was a Research Fellow at the Academy of Buddhist Studies, Dongguk University (2013–2014). She is currently a curator at Leeum, Samsung Museum of Art in Seoul where she co-curated the exhibition Exquisite and Precious: The Splendor of Korean Art in 2015 and edited its catalogue. Her research focuses on the relationship between Buddhist images and ritual practices in East Asia from the tenth to the fourteenth centuries. She has also published on the modern transformation of Korean Buddhist art. She is a guest co-editor of a special issue of Cahiers d’Extrême-Asie, dedicated to the consecration of Korean Buddhist images (forthcoming, 2020). She is currently working on a book manuscript that unfolds the history of the important ritual tradition bokjang in both local and cross-cultural contexts.

Richard D. McBride II

Richard D. McBride II is Associate Professor of Korean and East Asian Buddhist Studies at Brigham Young University. He is the author of Domesticating the Dharma: Buddhist Cults and the Hwaŏm Synthesis in Silla Korea (2008), Doctrine and Practice in Medieval Korean Buddhism: The Collected Works of Ŭich’ŏn (2017), and Aspiring to Enlightenment: Pure Land Buddhism in Silla Korea (forthcoming, 2020). He was the editor of State and Society in Middle and Late Silla (2010) and the editor and primary translator of Hwaŏm I: The Mainstream Tradition and Hwaŏm II: Selected Works (2012).

Lee Yongyun

Lee Yongyun received her MA and completed PhD coursework at Hongik University. Her major field of study is the history of Korean Buddhist art with a special interest in Buddhist paintings of the late Joseon period, on which she has published numerous articles. She has worked at the Research Institute of Buddhist Cultural Heritage since 2007, conducting research projects on both tangible and intangible Buddhist heritages of Korea. One of her projects on tangible heritage is A Survey of Buddhist Cultural Properties (2007–2012), and her projects on intangible heritage include A Survey on Contemporary Religious Practice of Bokjang Rituals (2012) and Traditions of Bokjang and Jeoman Rituals (2014). After completing research projects on the ritual tradition bokjang, she published an article titled “A Study of Bokjang in Buddhist Paintings of the Late Joseon Period.”

Ven. Gyeongam

Ven. Gyeongam completed his MA coursework at the Department of Archaeology and Art History at Dong-A University. He was designated a successor of the Korean Bulbokjang ritual, which is listed as National Intangible Cultural Heritage No. 139 by the Korean Government. Ven. Gyeongam is a monk of the Jogye Order of Korean Buddhism. He has served as the director of the Tripitaka Koreana Research Institute of Haeinsa temple since 2014 and is the head monk of Gyeongguksa temple in Seoul. He is also the current President of the Preservation Society of the Traditional Bulbokjang Ceremony.

Michelle C. Wang

Dr. Michelle C. Wang is Associate Professor in the Department of Art and Art History at Georgetown University. Her research specialization is the Buddhist art of the silk routes, and she teaches courses in premodern to modern Asian art history. Her first book Maṇḍalas in the Making: The Visual Culture of Esoteric Buddhism at Dunhuang was published by Brill in 2018, and her current research addresses Buddhist sculpture in medieval China through the lens of materiality.

Chung Woothak

Chung Woothak is Professor Emeritus of Art History at Dongguk University. He was the Director of Dongguk University Museum (2005–2018), a member of the Cultural Heritage Committee of Korea (2005–2013), and the Chairman of the Art History Association of Korea (2008–2010). He has contributed significantly to the definition of Goryeo Buddhist painting style and identified an expanding number of examples worldwide. The landmark 1997 publication Buddhist Painting of the Goryeo Dynasty, which he co-authored with Junichi Kikutake, is a seminal work that defined the field.