In this inquisitive Q&A series, meet Rangsook Yoon, Ph.D, senior curator for the the Sarasota Art Museum (SAM) since 2022. She oversees all aspects of the museum’s exhibition programming, leading the curatorial department in an effort to bring some of the world’s most captivating contemporary artists to Sarasota. In fact, she has helped to establish SAM as one of the top contemporary art institutions in the entire Southeast.
A recent day in your life. I start my day a little after five in the morning with a cup of strong black coffee in the sunroom while the world is still quiet. I take time to do nothing but watch the trees while I stretch and daydream. An hour later, I’m at the computer, getting into the flow of writing. After a smoothie and a shower, I head to the office by nine-ish. I open my laptop with another cup of coffee. The day is a blur of emails and back-to-back meetings, Zoom and in-person, largely about our upcoming Fall and Winter/Spring exhibitions that I curate and manage—Claire Ashley: Chromatic Blush, Tammy Nguyen: Timaeus and the Nations, Joe Fig: Contemplating Vermeer, and Future Now: Virtual Sneakers to Cutting-Edge Kicks. Lunch is quick and light. I steal a moment to chat with my colleagues beyond my curatorial team and walk through the galleries. After five in the evening, the office is quieter, and incoming emails slow down. I stay a little late writing a curatorial essay and gallery didactics. I review exhibition design packages and webpage and press release materials, and I send some more emails. By seven, I’m driving home, blasting upbeat music. I talk with a close friend and with my family in South Korea on the phone—it’s a daily ritual with friends and family who live far away in Florida or around the globe. Then it’s grocery shopping at Detwiler’s, cooking dinner with my husband, and walking around the neighborhood, the two of us and our four-year-old Doberman-lab mix, Caramel. I wind down with a little Kaos and Still Game on Netflix. Then I spend some time with books. I always have a few going, and right now it’s The Art of Gathering: How We Meet and Why It Matters by Priya Parker, The Invention of Morel by Adolfo Bioy Casares and Art Is Life by Jerry Saltz.
When you were a kid you dreamed of . . . becoming a multilingual author, painter, animator or concert pianist. But I also imagined myself fitting into my mother’s colorful dresses, watching late-night movies with no bedtime, and having Baskin & Robbins ice cream for breakfast, lunch and dinner.
Your guilty pleasure . . . sitting still and watching the world move—cats, a dog, squirrels and birds in motion, or the gentle rustling of leaves—while sipping coffee, tea or a really good scotch. Add in Läderach chocolates and Haagen-Dazs ice cream and that’s bliss.
My last supper would include . . . .a feast of Indian, Korean, Japanese and Thai flavors, finished with a fusion Korean-French dessert. I’d start with extra-hot goat curry, medium-hot vegetarian biryani, extra-hot ddukbokki, and Korean mul-mandu (water dumplings). There would also be sashimi—
specifically lots, and lots of sea urchins, scallops and tuna belly.
If not yourself, who would you be? I would be Jane Goodall.
Your favorite music artists . . . I love musicians who go for big emotions, so that includes Shostakovich and Mahler, but I also can’t resist the melodrama of Depeche Mode and the Pet Shop Boys.
What song best describes your life right now? Wonderful Life by Katie Melua, especially the joy of the sea, sunshine and friends. Sounds cheesy, but it expresses how much I love my life right now.
Your favorite food of the moment . . . my husband’s homemade chicken curry and chive dumplings from Dim Sum King.
If you could snap your fingers and appear somewhere else, where would you be? Carmel-by-the-Sea.
Your favorite villain in fiction . . . Tommy Shelby in Peaky Blinders, because he’s loyal to his family. So, even though he is a villain, he’s also a hero.
Your favorite villain in real life . . . I have a large animal menagerie, and if there’s one of my little beasts who could do the supervillain “Kneel before me!” thing, it’s my 11-year-old, 8-pound tuxedo cat, Sophie. With a classic Napoleon complex, she rules over the others with a mix of charisma and fierce discipline—complete with ear biting, swatting and the occasional strategic use of a single claw.
