Soyoon Ryu became a Neubauer Family Assistant Professor in the Department of Art History in 2025.
Ryu is an art historian whose research focuses on modern and contemporary Korean art, with particular attention to the relationships among art, place, ecology, and political history. Her work centers on artistic production in sites shaped by displacement and violence and examines how artists engage with land, memory, and environmental transformation. Ryu’s scholarship brings together art history, indigenous studies, and the environmental humanities to offer new perspectives on abstraction, site-specific practice, and transnational modernism in East Asia. Through archival research, fieldwork, and close engagement with artists, her work expands the scope of Korean art history while connecting it to global conversations in the humanities. As a Neubauer Family Assistant Professor, Ryu is developing a research program that deepens understanding of art and place while strengthening interdisciplinary connections across the arts and humanities at the University of Chicago.
Ryu received her Ph.D. in the History of Art at the University of Michigan in 2025. At the University of Chicago, she serves as a member of the Committee on Korean Studies and the Center for the Art of East Asia.