SEATTLE, WA.- Following a comprehensive national search managed by DSG Global, the Frye Art Museum announced that Rangsook Yoon, PhD, has been appointed to the newly created role of Senior Director of Curatorial Affairs. Working with the director and across museum leadership, Yoon will lead an ambitious team of six to realize inclusive and rigorous exhibitions; develop interpretive materials that make complex concepts accessible and engaging to broad audiences; and oversee the study, care, growth, and diversification of the Frye’s collection. Yoon will begin her new role in late May 2026.
“With both a deep scholarly background in European Modernism relevant to the Frye’s Founding Collection, and a proven track record of innovative collaborations with contemporary artists, Rangsook immediately stood out as a ‘unicorn’ candidate,” says Jamilee Lacy, Frye Executive Director. “She is uniquely poised to elevate the Frye’s current strengths, bridging our collections and exhibitions program and leading the museum into an exciting new era with impact in Seattle and beyond as we look toward our 75th anniversary year in 2027.”
As Senior Director of Curatorial Affairs, Yoon will provide collaborative leadership and strategic oversight for the museum’s curatorial, collections, and registration teams, ensuring alignment with the Frye’s mission and vision to serve as a free, dynamic third space for artists and audiences alike. The new role is designed to work across departments to embed curatorial thinking into broader institutional priorities, while serving as an active ambassador and key advocate for the Frye’s curatorial vision beyond the museum. Under Yoon’s leadership, the museum will continue to collaborate with other institutions, guest curators, and artist-curators on innovative exhibitions.
Since 2022, Yoon has served as the Senior Curator at Sarasota Art Museum of Ringling College of Art and Design in Sarasota, Florida, leading the curatorial team and forming part of the museum’s senior leadership. She has overseen the museum’s ambitious exhibition program and attained increased visibility for the institution on a national level. Her curatorial leadership has resulted in numerous highly acclaimed large-scale and site-specific commissions, including installations by Molly Hatch (Amalgam), Judy Pfaff (Picking up the Pieces), and Carlos Bunga (Reassembling Spilt Light). Her career demonstrates a clear throughline of championing local artists as well as organizing emerging and midcareer artists’ first museum solo exhibitions (Stephanie J. Woods, Juana Valdés, and Chris Friday, among others). And she has bridged past and present, drawing on her deep art historical knowledge, in exhibitions such as Art Deco: The Golden Age of Illustration.
Prior to joining Sarasota Art Museum, Yoon served as Director of Curatorial Affairs and Curator of Modern Art at Artis—Naples, The Baker Museum. Previously, she was Director of Experiences and Curator at the Art & History Museums–Maitland, where she oversaw exhibitions, public programs, educational initiatives, and artist residencies. Her earlier museum work ranged from a curatorial fellowship at the Rollins Museum of Art in Winter Park to volunteer research assistant at the Department of Drawings and Prints at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.
Yoon has a long-standing connection to European art history and German art in particular. She has published scholarly essays on German Renaissance art and writes for broad audiences on modern and contemporary artists across Europe, Asia, and the Americas. Born and educated in South Korea, she studied French language and literature at Korea University in Seoul before moving to the United States to pursue art history. She earned her MA from Cleveland State University and her PhD from the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University. While researching her dissertation, she spent several formative years in Europe, including a year in Munich studying German and conducting archival research. That experience fostered a lasting familiarity with the Munich Secessionists, whose work forms an important segment of the Frye’s founding-era collection. Trained as a specialist in European art from the Renaissance through the early twentieth century, she approaches curatorial practice with a lifelong learner’s intellectual curiosity and as an engaged generalist with a wide-ranging knowledge of global art histories, past and present.
Yoon states, “I’m honored and thrilled to join the Frye at this exciting moment of strategic growth under Jamilee’s leadership and to become part of Seattle—a dynamic, creative, and diverse city. It feels as though my three decades working across higher education, academia, and museums in the United States, my adopted country, have led me to this opportunity.
A commitment to excellence, rigor, experimentation, and an inclusive view of community will guide my curatorial vision as I put collaborative leadership into practice. In supporting the Frye’s talented curatorial and collections teams, I hope to embed visitor experience at the core of the museum’s pathbreaking programs. When we celebrate the Frye's first seventy-five years in 2027, I want us to be purposeful and energized as we look toward the coming decades.”
