He taught at the University of Illinois from 1950 to 1967 and was Chairman of Graduate Programs in Painting and Printmaking there. He served as Associate Dean of Fine Arts at the University of Southern California from 1967 to 1972. Lee was Professor of Art and Chairman of Graduate Art Programs at the University of Hawaii, Honolulu from 1972 to 1984 and Professor Emeritus from 1984 to 2016.
Chesney may have a connection with Mary Chenoweth, who also studied at DU, CSFAC and Urbana. She was at Urbana, Illinois at the same time as Lee Chesney. They may have overlapped with Richard Diebenkorn who as at Urbana at that time. Since the art world is small, it is highly likely.
Although he was a professor at UI, he also taught at CU Boulder with Ed Marecak in 1950 perhaps as a visiting professor as CU had an active summer visiting professor program that also welcomed Paul Burlin, Mark Rothko, Richard Diebenkorn Max Beckmann, Robert Motherwell, and Clyfford Still.
Chesney's work was included in over 100 exhibitions worldwide and he had twenty-five solo exhibitions. He was awarded a Fulbright-Hays Fellowship to Japan in 1956 and a University of Illinois Research Grant to France and Italy. He is represented in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art, Tokyo; National Gallery of Art, Stockholm; Tate Gallery, London; Bibliothèque Nationale de France; Victoria and Albert Museum, London; Smithsonian American Art Museum; Library of Congress; Museum of Modern Art New York; Brooklyn Museum; Philadelphia Museum; Honolulu Academy of Arts; Oakland Museum of California; Seattle Art Museum; Otis College of Art and Design, Los Angeles; Portland Art Museum; Art Institute of Chicago; the Butler Institute of American Art and numerous university collections. © David Cook Galleries, LLC