Curatorial Practice
Exhibitions as conversations between artists, cultures, materials, and communities.
Stephanie S. Lee develops and manages exhibitions from curatorial concept through installation, working across museums, galleries, higher education, nonprofit arts organizations, and community settings. Her practice brings together curatorial development, exhibition design, artist collaboration, visual communications, and public programming.
Selected Curatorial & Exhibition Projects

Red Horizon
Curator & Graphic Designer

In Presence, We Persist
Curator & Graphic Designer

Minhwa: Soul of Korea
Curator & Graphic Designer

Panorama of Roots
Curator & Graphic Designer

In Her Hands
Curator & Graphic Designer

Femina Creativa
Curator & Graphic Designer

Minhwa: The Color of Korea
Curator & Graphic Designer

Incremental Steps
Curator & Graphic Designer

Minhwa: Painting Resilience
Curator & Graphic Designer

Threads & Pigments
Curator & Graphic Designer

Querencia
Curator & Graphic Designer

The Majesty of Tibet
Co-Curator & Graphic Designer

East Meets West
Assistant Curator & Exhibition Designer

Rounded
Assistant Curator & Exhibition Designer

Eudaimonia
Curator & Graphic Designer

Queens: Envisioning Habitats
Curator & Graphic Designer

Evolving
Curator & Graphic Designer

Dynamic Dimensions
Curator & Graphic Designer

The First Sextet
Curator & Graphic Designer
Red Horizon
Red Horizon: Art, Heritage, New Energy brought together artists across media for a Lunar New Year exhibition at Flushing Town Hall. The installation connected contemporary work with ideas of heritage, transformation, and renewed energy across the gallery.





In Presence, We Persist
Presented by The Garage Art Center at Space G, this group exhibition brought together eighteen artists in a spacious contemporary setting. The installation emphasized the individuality of each practice while building visual relationships across painting, fiber, mixed media, and sculptural works.





Minhwa: Soul of Korea
A Korean folk-art exhibition at the Belskie Museum presenting contemporary approaches to Minhwa within a museum setting. The project paired gallery presentation with cultural programming, including a Korean tea ceremony during the opening reception.





Panorama of Roots
Panorama of Roots showcased Asian heritage through contemporary works installed across the Steinberg Museum of Art. The exhibition extended into public programming with a tea ceremony, connecting visual art, cultural memory, and shared experience.





In Her Hands
In Her Hands centered women creating and connecting in community. Presented at the Steinberg Museum of Art, the exhibition brought a broad range of media and visual languages into a long, continuous gallery installation.





Femina Creativa
Femina Creativa: Celebrating Women in New York presented a multi-artist exhibition at Queens College Art Center. The curved gallery architecture created a continuous viewing experience that brought together painting, drawing, fiber, sculpture, and mixed-media work.





Minhwa: The Color of Korea
A nine-artist exhibition presenting Korean Minhwa at the Belskie Museum of Art & Science. The installation placed traditional motifs and contemporary interpretations in dialogue across multiple gallery walls, introducing the visual language of Korean folk painting to a broad public audience.





Incremental Steps
Incremental Steps brought together seven artists working across painting, drawing, mixed media, and sculptural approaches. The installation created a clear visual rhythm across the gallery through contrast, spacing, scale, and color.



Minhwa: Painting Resilience
Minhwa: Painting Resilience presented contemporary Korean folk-art practices at Queens College Art Center. The exhibition used the gallery’s curved architecture to build a continuous sequence of symbolic paintings and works rooted in traditional Minhwa imagery.




Threads & Pigments
A group exhibition of nine Korean-American artists exploring diverse contemporary approaches through pigments, stitched threads, fiber, collage, sculpture, and painting. The exhibition framed material process as a way to speak about cultural connection, difference, and the movement between Korean traditions and contemporary life in the United States.




Querencia
Querencia, the third member exhibition of the Korea Minhwa Association, brought together contemporary Minhwa artists in a focused group presentation. The exhibition emphasized the personal and symbolic qualities of Korean folk painting within a contemporary gallery context.


The Majesty of Tibet
A solo exhibition of Chinese art by Yu Hanyu at the Islip Art Museum. Curated by Gan Yu, with Mary O’Malley and Stephanie S. Lee as co-curators. Lee contributed to the curatorial presentation and developed promotional visual communications supporting the exhibition.


East Meets West
A cross-cultural group exhibition at the Islip Art Museum. My role focused on translating the curatorial framework into the physical and visual experience of the exhibition through artwork placement, wall graphics, signage, print communications, and supporting public-program materials.




Rounded
A focused solo exhibition by Sei Ryun Chun at the Islip Art Museum. The circular format of the works was extended into the spatial rhythm of the installation and exhibition communications, with related public programming including a Korean tea ceremony.




Eudaimonia
Eudaimonia, the second member exhibition of the Korea Minhwa Association, brought together twelve artists in a group presentation of Korean folk art. Stephanie S. Lee curated the exhibition and developed its visual identity and promotional materials, coordinating the presentation and installation of the works.

Queens: Envisioning Habitats
A Queens-centered group exhibition bringing together artists through ideas of place, environment, neighborhood, and lived experience. The exhibition used a map-based visual identity that carried from promotional materials into the gallery’s introductory presentation. The exhibition was presented by Flushing Town Hall and curated by Stephanie S. Lee.








Evolving
Curated and installed by Stephanie S. Lee, Evolving, The Drawing Room’s seventh exhibition, brought together five Korean-American artists at the Korean Cultural Center Washington, D.C. The exhibition considered how individual practices continue to change through migration, memory, environment, material experimentation, and the ongoing search for direction and balance in life. Lee also developed the exhibition’s promotional graphic materials, creating a cohesive visual identity across the project’s communications.






Dynamic Dimensions
A multi-artist exhibition bringing together works that move between two- and three-dimensional approaches. The project paired a spatially varied gallery presentation with an integrated graphic identity, including a modular postcard system highlighting individual participating artists.




The First Sextet
The inaugural exhibition of The Drawing Room brought together six artists from different professional and creative backgrounds. Rather than centering competition or individual status, the exhibition emphasized exchange, shared enthusiasm for art, and six distinct points of view within one collective presentation.




Approach
Artist-centered, visually coherent, and audience-aware.
My curatorial work begins with artists and the relationships their works can create when placed in conversation. I approach exhibitions as both intellectual and spatial experiences, considering concept, sequence, scale, wall text, graphics, public programs, and the practical details that allow the work to be encountered clearly.
Working across cultural institutions and community settings has made collaboration central to my practice. I value thoughtful interpretation, respectful communication with artists, and exhibitions that remain accessible without reducing the complexity of the work.
Flushing Town Hall · Space G at Mana Contemporary · Steinberg Museum of Art at Long Island University · The Belskie Museum of Art & Science · Queens College Art Center · Islip Art Museum · The Garage Art Center · The Drawing Room New York