Amy Y.T. Chang

Amy Y.T. Chang works on the art and architecture of the Spanish Empire and the results of its contact with Indo-Pacific cultures in the 16th-18th centuries; as well as Spanish architectural theory, stylistic censorship, environmental engineering, and territorialization of the sea. These foci integrate environmental and stylistic interests drawn from her undergraduate training at The Johns Hopkins University (Dept. Earth & Planetary Science, Dept. History), and her MA from Columbia University (Dept. Art History & Archaeology). Amy's dissertation focuses on the construction and reception of the ‘Spanish Islamic’ in Andalusia and the Spanish encounter with cultures of Indian Ocean Islam; as well as the migrations and transformations of the Spanish and Italian Renaissance and Baroque in Iberian Asia, with particular attention to contact with the local architectures, alternative antiquarianisms, and the vegetal arts of island Southeast Asia. She also writes on portraiture and still-life. 

Amy's research and writing has appeared in exhibition catalogues for the Prado Museum in Madrid (Zóbel. The Future of the Past, which traveled to the Ayala Museum in Manila and the National Gallery of Singapore), the Spanish Embassy in Washington, DC (History of Hispanism: Spain and Beyond); and in the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians. She has also co-curated exhibitions for Dumbarton Oaks (The Stimulant Sea: Sugar, Coffee, and the Acquisition of Taste) and the New York Botanical Garden (Coffee & Caffeine Cultures: A History of Science & Craving) on botanical exchange and cultural transformation in the liquid cultures of the Red Sea and Indian Ocean, and has curatorial projects in co-development in Southeast Asia. Amy was the 2024-2026 Samuel H. Kress Foundation Institutional Fellow at the Bibliotheca Hertziana–Max Planck Institute for Art History, and her work has previously been supported by the Graham Foundation, the Mellon Urban Initiative, RSA, Dumbarton Oaks, and Villa i Tatti, among others.