Keyu YAN (he/他) is an art historian and writer. His research focuses on modern and contemporary Chinese art while also examining gender, sexuality, and diasporic identity in Asian American visual culture. His current book project investigates how installation art radically expanded the concept of art in China during the 1980s and 1990s. This research has been supported by grants and awards from the Bei Shan Tang Foundation, the Association for Chinese Art History, and The Ohio State University.

Yan’s peer-reviewed articles and reviews have appeared in East Asian Publishing and Society, Burlington Contemporary, World Art, ASAP/J, and InVisible Culture. He has presented his research at institutions including the College Art Association, the Association for Asian Studies, the Historical Society for Twentieth Century China, the University of Texas at Austin, Macalester College, Kenyon College, and the Minneapolis Institute of Arts.

He has held curatorial and research appointments at Red Gate Gallery (Beijing), the Flaten Art Museum, and The Ohio State University. In 2023, he served as the Henry Luce Foundation Curatorial Research Associate at the Frank Museum of Art, where he researched and transcribed ink paintings by the Chinese American artist C. Y. Woo. In 2022, he participated in the Andrew W. Mellon Chinese Object Workshops at the Art Institute of Chicago and the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of Asian Art. He has also collaborated with and interviewed leading contemporary Chinese artists, including Gu Wenda, Xu Bing, Shi Hui, and Liang Shaoji.

Yan received his PhD and MA in History of Art from The Ohio State University and his BA, magna cum laude with distinction in Art History, from St. Olaf College. He is currently a professor of Art History at the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD), where he teaches undergraduate and graduate courses on East Asian art, contemporary art, and film history.