October 26, 2020
I write to share the sad news that Ming Cho Lee, the Donald M. Oenslager Professor in the Practice of Design Emeritus, died of natural causes at the age of 90 on October 23.
Born in Shanghai, Ming earned his B.A. from Occidental College in 1953. Early in his career, he assisted Boris Aronson and Jo Mielziner; his first Broadway design was 1962’s The Moon Besieged, and soon after, he joined the New York Shakespeare Festival for a decade as principal designer. Ming arrived at Yale in 1969 to teach set design, and the following year he succeeded Donald Oenslager as the Chair of the Design Department, only the second person in the history of the School to fill that role. He retired from teaching at the end of 2017, after 48½ years of service, 43 of them as Chair or Co-Chair.
It is difficult to overstate the breadth of Ming’s achievements in the field and in nearly half a century of work at Yale. He designed more than 300 productions worldwide, on Broadway and off, as well as at major opera and dance companies. His work has been captured in retrospectives at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts and Yale School of Architecture, as well as in Taiwan and China, and in the magisterial volume, Ming Cho Lee: A Life in Design, by Arnold Aronson, published by TCG in 2014. He received the National Medal of the Arts, which is the highest national award given to artists, as well as two Tony Awards, one of them for Lifetime Achievement; OBIE, Outer Critics Circle, and Drama Desk Awards; and the TCG Practitioner Award. He was awarded six honorary degrees, including one from Yale University in 2020, and was inducted into the Theater Hall of Fame in 1998.
At the School of Drama, his commitment to a unified Design curriculum, informed by world-class artistry, showed itself first in the brilliance of his own recruiting. He was directly responsible for bringing to our faculty such extraordinary artists and teachers as Jane Greenwood, Wendall Harrington, and Jennifer Tipton, as well as his beloved former students, including Jess Goldstein (’78), Riccardo Hernández (’92), Lee Savage (’05), Ilona Somogyi (’94), Stephen Strawbridge (’83), and Michael Yeargan (’73): their talents and sense of collective mission amplified the impact of his leadership.
Ming’s own teaching was generous, inspiring, and often surprising. He was known to insist that students who were unregistered voters leave his class and not come back until they had registered. He opened his legendary Saturday class—a life-changing rite of passage for designers—to students in every discipline, as well as from Yale College and the other graduate and professional schools. Passionate and self-aware in his subjectivity, Ming encouraged and engaged in real arguments, knew how to be personal without taking things personally, and was able to leaven almost any situation with a joke at his own expense. He knew that designing is also about thinking, reading, observing, critiquing, and collaborating, and he modelled good will and perseverance in his encouragement of all students to embrace the fullness of their roles, not only as artists, but also as citizens.
It is hardly surprising, then, that Ming was revered by colleagues and students throughout the School, as well as nationally. For 25 years, he and his wife, Betsy, brilliantly oversaw the “Clambake,” welcoming designers emerging from graduate schools across the nation to portfolio reviews with field leaders. Ming figured prominently in the recruitment to Yale of such distinguished figures as former Dean and Artistic Director Lloyd Richards, as well as Ron Van Lieu, the Lloyd Richards Professor in the Practice of Acting Emeritus. He mentored generations of new faculty members—including me—with deft kindness and no hint of condescension. His exquisite taste and commitment to innovation have been seen and memorialized here in countless design projects, from the color of the signage at Yale Rep (“Ming Red”), to seating units for School productions (“Ming Risers”), to an enclosure for the Yale Rep auditorium (the “Ming Wall”), to the lighting gobo that bears his name (“Ming Cho Leaves”).
Above all, Ming's former students—including but not limited to what is certainly the largest cohort of accomplished designers ever taught by the same person—are now themselves leaders of the profession and in conservatories around the world. He may now rest, but his work lives on in those of us who count ourselves fortunate to have known him, learned from him, and loved him.
My deepest condolences go out to Betsy and to the entire Lee family. Funeral arrangements will be private, and the family plans to hold a memorial service when large public gatherings are once again possible.
With gratitude for all the blessings of Ming’s life and spirit, shared with our community over so many years, I remain,
Yours sincerely,
James Bundy
Dean, Yale School of Drama
Artistic Director, Yale Repertory Theatre