Yong Soon Min

Yong Soon Min was born in 1953, a few months short of the Korean War ending in Armistice. She immigrated to the U.S. in 1960 and grew up in Monterey, California, where her father had found work at the U.S. Army Defense Language Institute. Min’s artistic training took place at the University of Berkeley, California (1971-79), where her interests progressed from painting to printbased, mixed-media installation works. During her time in New York City in the 1980s and 1990s, Min emerged as an artist, cultural organizer, and core member of many grassroots Asian American artist collectives and Korean diasporic community organizations, such as the Asian American Arts Alliance, Godzilla: Asian American Arts Network, and SEORO Korean Cultural Network. Alongside her career as an artist and curator working on both local and international scales, Min was a devoted educator at the University of California, Irvine, from 1993 to 2014.

Authored by Anna Lee, curatorial assistant for Asian American art, 2025.