Robert and Lisa Sainsbury Fellow 2015 - 2016
PhD Candidate, University of Boston
Seung Yeon Sang is a historian of Japanese art with particular focus on the Japanese practice of appreciating and collecting ceramics in chanoyu. Her primary research interests are transnational forms of ceramic production, the impact of Japan’s modern transformations on aesthetics and history-writing, and the meaning and uses of the museum. Her dissertation examines the trajectory of ceramic scholarship in modern Japan from its emergence in the 1910s to the first pinnacle of its development from 1924 to 1931. She has received fellowships from the Japan Foundation, the Korea Foundation, the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New York), and the Smithsonian Institution (Freer and Sackler Galleries of Art).