Amy Kan

About Amy Kan

Amy Kan (they/she) is a third-year art history major and Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellow at Grinnell College, originally from Chicago, IL. Since their first semester, they have worked as a collections assistant at the Grinnell College Museum of Art, where they began ongoing research on Swiss-American artist Sonja Sekula (1918–1963) and Zen, with a publication forthcoming in the GCMoA catalogue in spring 2026. Kan began curating in high school and has since organized exhibitions for The Wrong’s 6th Biennale, Grin Cupola’s now semi-annual pop-up show, and multiple exhibitions for Basement Gallery, a student-run space they co-founded to spotlight emerging student artists working in experimental formats. Their research centers on revisionist approaches to the modern and contemporary canon, with particular interest in European and American painting and photography. They are especially drawn to questions of East-West cultural exchange, postmodernism, abstraction, and gender and queer theory. Beginning in fall 2025, Kan will serve as a Vivero Digital Humanities Fellow and, in the spring, as a writing mentor. They are currently learning German, with plans to begin studying French as well. Rather controversially, they have several bones to pick with American photographer Cindy Sherman.

Experience

1. Undergraduate Research Fellow

   Mellon Foundation

   Mar 2025 — Present

Education

• Grinnell College

  Bachelor's degree

  2023 — 2027

• Leipzig University

  German course with interDaF e. V. am Herder-Institut der Universität Leipzig

  2025 — 2025

• Walter Payton College Prep High School

  High School Diploma

  2019 — 2023