The Cleveland Plain Dealer‘s Steven Litt announces the appointment of Seunghye Sun as the Cleveland Museum of Art’s new curator of Japanese and Korean Art:

Seunghye Sun, a rising scholar of Japanese and Korean art, has spent much of her career building understandings among two countries with a history of sometimes-bitter tension.

Starting in July, she’ll employ her cultural skills at the Cleveland Museum of Art, where she has been appointed curator of Japanese and Korean art. […]

The appointment of Sun fills a major gap at the museum, which has been without a curator of Japanese and Korean art since 2003, when former director Katharine Reid eliminated the position, held by Michael Cunningham since 1977. […]

Sun’s position is funded for three years by a $450,000 grant from the Andrew Mellon Foundation in New York, but is expected to continue, Mann said.

Sun’s major responsibility will be shaping the installation of a large part of the museum’s world-famous Asian collection in its new West Wing, scheduled to open in 2013.

She may also organize temporary exhibitions from the permanent collection before the West Wing opens, Mann said.

Since 2005, the Asian collection has been in storage, with the exception of an exhibition in the summer devoted to the late Sherman Lee, a world-famous authority on Asian art, who directed the museum from 1958 to 1983.

Seunghye Sun appointed curator of Japanese and Korean Art at the Cleveland Museum of Art (Cleveland Plain Dealer)