Sol Jung joined the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Asian Art in 2021 as the inaugural Shirley Z. Johnson assistant curator of Japanese art. She oversees the museum’s collection of prehistoric to contemporary Japanese ceramics, lacquerware, metalwork, and textiles.

Jung is a specialist on transnational East Asian art history with a focus on the impact of maritime trade in facilitating artistic exchange between Korea and Japan during the premodern period, and the reverberations of this cross-cultural relationship into the present. Jung received her B.A. with distinction in History of Art at the University of Pennsylvania, and her M.A. and Ph.D. in Art and Archaeology from Princeton University. Jung curated Princeton University Art Museum’s first thematic exhibition of Korean ceramics entitled Korean Ceramics: From Archaeology to Art History. She has examined the reception of Korean tea bowls, called kōrai chawan in Japan, during the sixteenth century. Fieldwork at several maritime settlement sites in Japan, and analysis of period tea documents, literary texts, and archaeological remains have informed her research, which has been supported by the Metropolitan Center for Far Eastern Art Studies and the Kyujanggak International Center for Korean Studies.

Jung’s recent exhibitions include Knotted Clay: Raku Ceramics and Tea (2022), Striking Objects: Contemporary Japanese Metalwork (2023) and Japanese Art from the Collections (2024). A forthcoming exhibition (2025) will examine historic tea utensils from the Kinsey Chanoyu Collection. The majority of this gift from former trustee and longtime tea practitioner, Gregory Kinsey, continues to be used at the museum for public tea presentations organized in collaboration with tea practitioners and tea schools.

Jung is a core team member of the Getty-funded project at Kyushu University, Shared Coasts and Divided Historiographies: Mobilizing People, Ideas, and Artifacts in the East Asian Mediterranean. Jung is also a team collaborator for Teaching Tea: Culture, History, Practice, Art an open-access project on Japan Past and Presented supported by the Yanai Initiative for Globalizing Japanese Humanities at UCLA and Waseda University.

Webpage

• Jung, Sol. 2020. Korean Celadons of the Goryeo Dynasty. Smarthistory. Aug 26, 2020 2020

Presentation

• Jung, Sol. 2022. Mapping the Circulation and Use of Korean Tea Bowls in Sixteenth Century Japan [presentation]. June 28, 2022. University of Copenhagen.