Meet the Collectors
"I have been one of Elizabeth Keith's devoted fans ever since I read her books. Though uninitiated in the art world in general and woodblock prints in particular, I found myself reading everything about Keith and collecting her woodblock prints with fervor."
Dr. Young-Dahl Song (Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania) is an Emeritus Professor of Political Sciences at East Carolina University. He taught US Government and Public Administration at ECU for thirty years. One of his hobbies is collecting antique books about Korea written by western authors because of his interest in exploring how western people perceived Korea in the early 20th century. Ever since Dr. Song discovered two books by Elizabeth Keith, Old Korea and Eastern Windows, he was deeply impressed with her artworks and endeavored to collect as many of Keith’s paintings and prints as possible. Dr. Song translated these two books into Korean and published them in 2006 and 2012, respectively. Furthermore, he also published the latest supplemented Korean version of Old Korea in 2020.
Exhibitions of Dr. Song’s collections have been held worldwide, including at the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art (2006-2007) and Gyeongnam Art Museum in Korea (2007), Korea Society in New York City (2010) and Charles B. Wang Center at Stony Brook University in New York (2019), among others. He also donated around 400 antique books from his collections to the National Library of Korea in 2016; the catalog was published under the title of Western Women Who Loved Korea: 1883-1950.
Dr. Song’s love for the foreign artists who depicted Korea in the early and mid-20th century continues to grow. Now, his collections include the works of Lilian Miller, Paul Jacoulet, Willy Seiler, and Hiroshi Yoshida.
Dr. Juliet Kim Song is a retired anesthesiologist and one of the three founding partners of the Pitt County Anesthesia Associates. She is regarded as the first female full-time doctor at the Pitt County Memorial Hospital (now the ECU Health Medical Center) in Greenville, NC. Dr. Kim-Song earned her medical degree from Ewha Women’s University in Korea and moved to the States in 1966 to practice medicine. She worked as a doctor in the Greenville community for thirty-three years before retirement.
The Song family lived in Greenville for over 30 years, raising three daughters in Pitt County. Currently living in Chapel Hill, NC, Drs. Young-Dahl Song and Juliet Kim Song have supported Korean communities and young Korean-American generations by offering scholarships.