Young Min Moon

Born in South Korea, Young Min Moon received his Ed.M from Harvard University and his M.F.A. from California Institute of the Arts. Moon is a visual artist, critic, curator, and art historian whose work reflects his migration across cultures and his awareness of the hybrid nature of identities forged amid the complex historical and political relationships between Asia and North America.

Moon published his essays on contemporary Korean art in a wide range of publications, including Contemporary Art in Asia: A Critical Reader (MIT), A Companion to Korean Art (Wiley), and exhibition catalogs and anthologies published by the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul Museum of Art, and journals The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, Rethinking Marxism, and Trans Asia Photography. He is an editor for the online peer review journal Trans Asia Photography. He curated the traveling exhibition, “Incongruent: Contemporary Art from South Korea,” with an accompanying bilingual Korean and English publication. Moon has given invited lectures at the ArtSonje Center, Art Space Pool, the Asia Society Hong Kong, Rice University, and the University of Colorado Boulder Museum of Art, among many others. Moon was a nominee for Carnegie Fellowship in 2022 and gave the annual Distinguished Faculty Lecture at UMass Amherst in 2023.

In his paintings and text-based works, Moon represents loss, mourning, and reflection on violence. In recent years he has been painting the motif of offerings and prostrations for the dead in the Confucian ritual, Jesa. Moon has shown his art in many exhibitions in South Korea and North America, including KADIST San Francisco, the Korea Society in NYC, Smith College Museum of Art, Incheon Art Platform, Sansumunhwa, Art Space Pool, Kumho Museum of Art, Gyeonggi Museum of Art, Kukje Gallery, Mugaksa Temple, Seoul National University Museum of Art, and the Carpenter Center at Harvard University, among others. Moon’s work is in the collection of the Seoul Museum of Art, Kumho Museum of Art, Seoul, and Kadist Art Foundation, San Francisco, among others.

Distinguished Professor in the Department of Art at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, Moon is a recipient of Nanji Residency at the Seoul Museum of Art, Massachusetts Cultural Council Grant, Canada Council Grant, Ontario Art Council Grant, Marion and Jasper Whiting Foundation Fellowship, Guggenheim Fellowship, and Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant.