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. Her  research focuses on the construction and reception of the ‘Spanish Islamic’ in Andalusia and the Spanish encounter with cultures of Indian Ocean Islam in island Southeast Asia. In the Indo-Pacific sphere, she writes on the migration and transformation of Spanish and Italian Baroque architectures in Asia; and the influence of traditional Indo-Pacific architectures and environments on Spanish imperial architectural thought, environmental engineering, and territorialization of the sea, with particular attention to vanishing architectures, alternative antiquarianisms, and vegetal arts. She also writes on portraiture and still-life.

Amy completed her undergraduate work at Johns Hopkins University in the Dept. History and the Dept. Earth and Planetary Science, and her master's studies at Columbia University in the Dept. Art History & Archaeology. Her writing has appeared in exhibition catalogues for the Prado Museum in Madrid (with travel to the Ayala Museum in Manila and the National Gallery of Singapore), Spanish Embassy in Washington, DC; and in the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians. She has also co-curated exhibitions for Dumbarton Oaks and the New York Botanical Garden on botanical exchange and cultural transformation in the liquid cultures of the Red Sea and Indian Ocean, and has projects in co-development in Singapore and elsewhere.