Editor’s Note: This is the first of two stories detailing the evolution of the Celestial Cartography Project. This project was funded by the Vision 2030 Global Strategy Implementation Grant and featured students from four different courses taught by Professor Somi Lee. The project went through three different phases and spanned two semesters. This first story highlights the project’s origins and outlines the first phase.
CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — Somi Lee, teaching assistant professor of art education at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, envisioned a cross-disciplinary art project that would bring students from two countries together through a common canvas—the night sky.
Funded through the Vision 2030 Global Strategy Implementation Grant, the Celestial Cartography Project: Mapping Shared Skies brought together students and scholars from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and Seoul National University to develop collaborative, interdisciplinary work integrating art, science, and cultural inquiry.
Lee explained that the idea for this project grew out of a conversation she had at a conference with a scholar from Seoul National University.
“As we talked about our work, the conversation naturally turned into brainstorming a possible cross-cultural collaboration. We were very naive and very optimistic about what international work could look like,” Lee said.
During that conversation, Lee remembered the international work she had already done with one of her art classes (ARTE 475) and knew she just had to do something different. She recalled thinking about things that people in Seoul and people in Champaign could share and genuinely collaborate on together and since she had done previous cartography work, she thought the sky would be the perfect answer.
“We are sharing the same sky. There is no borderline; there is no territory. I felt like the sky was the perfect answer, and the Vision 2030 Global Strategy Implementation Grant became the perfect catalyst to make it happen,” Lee said. “The original idea was using like Sky Map as a metaphor for connections across culture, while still honoring different yet distinct traditions, and it also connected to my own research on public pedagogy and place making and how art can bridge diaspora and community stories. Partnering with SNU felt very natural to me because of my background, and of course, once we started working together, the project took on a path of its own.”
Although Lee’s initial idea didn’t exactly go according to plan, she never abandoned the project. Instead, she pivoted through its evolution creating a space where cross-cultural learning thrived, and a space where Illinois students could shine just as bright as the night sky.
Four Courses, Three Phases, Two Semesters, One Project
Fifty-four undergraduate art students at Illinois participated in the project across four courses that Lee already teaches.
There were 12 students from ARTE 260: Museums in Action (Spring 2025), 11 students from ARTE 475: Art Exhibition Practices (Fall 2025), 21 students from ARTE 202: Facilitating Art Experiences (Fall 2025), and 10 students from ARTE 140: Introduction to Art (Fall 2025).
Students developed global competencies through engagement with cross-cultural celestial narratives and international collaboration processes as well as gained experience in exhibition planning, curation, artist recruitment, and public programming.
ARTE 475 students, in particular, gained direct professional experience organizing a large-scale public exhibition at the Design Museum of Chicago.
Additionally, the project gained international visibility through an exhibition in Canada and through collaboration with SNU, which remains active and engaged despite initial barriers.
Overall, there were three phases of the project that spanned two semesters and produced three activities.
The first activity was an exhibition at the Siebel Center for Design in May 2025 that featured celestial maps students made based on cross-cultural narratives drawn from Native American and Korean astronomical traditions.
The second activity, an event at the Design Museum of Chicago in November 2025, included a pop-up show, presentations, and public workshops.
Lee explained that the third activity extended the project’s reach internationally through a two-day exhibition at Boynton House in Richmond Hill, Ontario, Canada in January 2026. This exhibition showcased collaborations with graffiti artists from around the world alongside the ongoing partnerships with SNU and the University of Chicago.
Although the Boynton House exhibition was planned collaboratively by 11 ARTE 475 students in Fall 2025, it was presented by Lee on the group’s behalf to ensure international visibility within the projects budget constraint.
These phases serve as a reminder on how the project evolved throughout implementation.
Phase One: Learning and Evolving
At first, Lee said the original project proposal focused entirely on celestial cartography and mapping the sky as a shared visual phenomenon across cultures. She wanted to show students that the sky bridges cultures and brings communities together.
This was inspired by her own interest in public pedagogy.
“What really drives me is public pedagogy. I think it’s the central theme of my teaching, research, and scholarly work. It’s the idea that art making, or activities, or any arts available in public spaces and community spaces can foster community dialogue and build community values and help people make sense of their own identity, place, and belonging,” she noted.
Public pedagogy is about bringing people together, she said, and in this case people like artists and their artwork.
“I think that’s the beauty of what public pedagogy is. It’s exploring ways to bring people together and expand our perspectives by sharing different incredible insights,” Lee said.
That’s why she emphasized to her students that the sky is not only pretty, but it’s also the same sky over Urbana, over Champaign, and over Seoul.
“It is one of the few things that people everywhere can see together,” she said. “So, I asked students to create a sky map using a tool called ‘Stellaraium’ to study the position of the stars then use photoshop or illustrator to turn that into artwork.”
That was the first phase of the project, which was carried out with 12 students enrolled in ARTE 260 at Illinois.
During the course, students developed celestial maps integrating scientific observation tools, digital art software, and cross-cultural narratives drawn from Native American and Korean astronomical traditions.
Lee gave students the freedom to choose any country or culture that they wanted to explore more deeply. Some students focused on Mexico, others on China or India, and others focused on stories connected to Champaign.
“So, they mixed those cultural traditions with their own artistic ideas (but) as we kept working and talking, the project started to change," Lee noted. "I realized that while the sky itself is shared and appears the same from any location, the stories rooted in land, place, and their actual lives are very different depending on where they come from. Those stories often feel more meaningful and powerful when we try to understand each other across cultures, and that idea became important later in the project.”
The resulting works were exhibited at the Siebel Center for Design in May 2025, providing students with hands-on experience in exhibition planning and curation.
Collaboration with Seoul National University took place during this phase and was facilitated through a SNU scholar who gathered and represented student perspectives from Korea, serving as a liaison between both institutions.
Direct cross-institutional student participation was not feasible due to misaligned academic calendars between the U.S. semester system and the Korean academic calendar.
That wasn’t the only challenge Lee and her students faced either. They also had difficulties with timing in other areas. For example, they weren't able to really capture the change in star formations given the allotted time they had, and Lee also explained that they didn't have enough time to research those changes, cartography, and the different cultures they were exploring.
Furthermore, they didn't have any cultural experts to confirm the information that the students explored.
“(For instance) if (the information) was about South Korea, I would serve as a cultural expert since I’m from there. I could tell them, ‘Oh, this is the story about the traditions connected to that star,’ or ‘yes, that’s accurate.’ However, I couldn’t serve as the expert for the rest of the countries (that they chose), and that was something that I felt like I should have been more prepared for before starting the project,” Lee said.
Still, the first phase found success particularly in lively weekly check-in sessions. There, students shared what they found throughout the week, and Lee recalled that each discussion was quite active.
“So, that process was very clear, and that process was really helpful in each other's learning,” Lee added. “One unexpected discussion that came out of those check-ins was about astrology. It was interesting to learn about the background information about Taurus and that personality.”
After the work from the first phase was put on display in Siebel, the project evolved from there and instead centered on land-based and human narratives. Lee said this new approach proved to be more generative for cross-cultural exchange.
This shift is especially reflected in the second phase of the project, which engaged Professor Dongmei Liu’s research on rural Chinese folk artists, and in the Canada exhibition which explored diaspora, place, and cultural memory through “Tracing Connections.”
“After having the show at the Siebel Center, it wasn't so satisfying because the (cultural) exchange was not sufficient enough from my perspective,” Lee said. “My students created what they were supposed to (the cartography), but the student from Seoul didn’t create a sky map. They only provided feedback on my students' finished work, and that wasn't the outcome that I imagined. I wanted to do something more, and that's what drove me to think about the project at the Design Museum of Chicago.”
Analicia Haynes is the storytelling coordinator at Illinois International. She can be reached at ahayn2@illinois.edu.