Dr. Melissa Karmen Lee (李林嘉敏) is a Canadian curator and cultural leader whose practice focuses on social practice art, public history, and diasporic visual culture. She is the curator of Dream Factory: Cantopop, Mandopop, 1980s–2000, a seminal visual art exhibition that explores the sonic and visual worlds of Asian popular music through the lens of the Chinese Canadian diaspora.

Lee currently serves as Chief Executive Officer of the Chinese Canadian Museum in Vancouver, where she led the successful launch of its 27,000-square-foot permanent home in July 2023. Since its opening, the museum has presented seven exhibitions, including three major inaugural shows. In its founding year, the museum received both the National Trust for Canada Award and the Governor General’s History Award for Excellence in Museums, and under her leadership, secured over $20 million in philanthropic and government support to establish its long-term sustainability.

A social practice curator, Lee engages in cross-disciplinary work that bridges artists, archives, and communities. In November 2023, she curated Rirkrit Tiravanija: Jouez / Play at the PHI Foundation for Contemporary Art in Montreal. From 2016 to 2019, she was part of the founding team at Tai Kwun Centre for Heritage and Arts in Hong Kong, where she initiated the Summer Institute, including Labour and Privilege (2018) and Future Commons (2019), which featured artists and scholars such as Ackbar Abbas, Ramon Amaro, Yuk Hui, Joan Kee, Jaleh Mansoor, Alice Jim, Martha Rosler, and Rirkrit Tiravanija. From 2019 to 2022, she served as Director of Education and Public Programs at the Vancouver Art Gallery, where she developed Art Connects, an online talk show and artist commission series launched during the COVID-19 pandemic. The series featured new works by YOUNG-HAE CHANG HEAVY INDUSTRIES, Justin Talplacido Shoulder, Ese Atawo, and Justine A. Chambers. From 2008 to 2015, she held a Senior Lectureship in the Department of English at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

Lee holds degrees from McGill University, the University of Canterbury, and Lancaster University.