A new exhibition of paintings by Haverford College fine arts professor Hee Sook Kim is on view at the campus Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery through Oct. 9.
"Elsewhere, the Mountain: Hee Sook Kim and Landscapes of Belonging" opened Friday, Sept. 4, with a talk by Kim and curator Lauren McCardel followed by a reception. The show is free and open to the public at the gallery inside the Whitehead Campus Center.
Kim, professor and chair of fine arts, takes on Mont Sainte-Victoire, a peak in southern France that the college describes as an iconic motif in Western art history. In her new and recent works, she layers paint with intricate beadwork and symbolic imagery drawn from Korean culture, according to the college's exhibition listing.
The college said Kim's paintings transform the mountain into a space for cultural translation and inquiry, inviting viewers to reconsider the narratives that shape art history.
Kim, originally from South Korea, has taught at Haverford since 2002, according to her faculty profile. She works across printmaking, painting and video. Her honors include a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant and an NEA/MAAF Regional Fellowship, according to her artist profile.
This is not her first show at the Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery. Kim mounted solo exhibitions there in 2014, 2018 and 2022. Her most recent, "Surfacing," explored the layered surfaces of her canvases as expressions of personal history and cultural identity, according to the college's exhibitions archive.
McCardel curated the current exhibition with support from the John B. Hurford '60 Center for the Arts and Humanities, Haverford College said on its Facebook page. One featured work, "Mountain Spirits 7," is a 2026 mixed-media piece on canvas.
Admission is free.
The Cantor Fitzgerald Gallery is in Room 104 of the Whitehead Campus Center on Haverford College's campus. The gallery is scheduled to be open Monday, Sept. 7, from 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. and Sunday, Sept. 27, from noon to 5 p.m. The exhibition closes Oct. 9.
