Zoe S. Kwok

Zoe S. Kwok joined the Princeton University Art Museum in 2013 and oversees the collections of Asian art as the Nancy and Peter Lee Curator of Asian Art. A specialist in Chinese art history, her recent projects include organizing the 2024 Elson Artist-in-Residence program, featuring the internationally recognized painter Liu Xiaodong, as well as editing and contributing to a special volume of the Record of the Princeton University Art Museum (vol. 79–80). This edition focused on the Museum’s renowned collection of Chinese art and was dedicated to Dr. Cary Y. Liu, the Nancy and Peter Lee Curator Emeritus of Asian Art.  

In 2023 Kwok curated the Art@Bainbridge exhibition Threading Memories / MiKyoung Lee, which showcased contemporary Korean-American artist Lee’s fiber art. Kwok’s 2019 exhibition The Eternal Feast: Banqueting in Chinese Art from the 10th to the 14th Century (with an accompanying publication) was the first scholarly project to address the central role banqueting played in the production of art during China’s Liao, Song, and Yuan dynasties. Previously, she brought two South Asian exhibitions to Princeton in 2016—Epic Tales from India: Paintings from The San Diego Museum of Art and Contemporary Stories: Revisiting South Asian Narratives—co-curated the 2015 exhibition Sacred Caves of the Silk Road: Ways of Knowing and Re-creating Dunhuang, and worked on the 2014 exhibition Chigusa and the Art of Tea in Japan. Kwok’s work appears in catalogues published by other institutions including Dining with the Sultan: The Fine Art of Feasting (LACMA, 2023) and Xu Bing: Word Alchemy (Asia Society, Houston, 2024). Occasionally, Kwok will offer classes in Princeton’s Department of Art & Archaeology including China’s Objects: Opulence and Innovation and Introduction to Asian Art.  

Kwok received her PhD in East Asian Art & Archaeology from Princeton University in 2013, with a dissertation on the depiction of court women in architectural settings during the Song dynasty (960–1279). She also earned an MA in East Asian Studies from Harvard University and a BA in history and art history from Wellesley College. Prior to joining the Art Museum, Kwok was an adjunct visiting professor at Franklin & Marshall College. She has also worked at the National Palace Museum, Taiwan, and was a Fulbright Fellow in China.