An Paenhuysen is a historian, art critic and curator. In 2010, together with Wolfgang Müller, she curated an exhibition about the Berlin performer/dancer Valeska Gert at the Hamburger Bahnhof - Museum für Gegenwart - Berlin. Her exhibition on Land Art was on show at the Hamburger Bahnhof until January 15, 2012.    

Dr. Paenhuysen is the author of The New World. The Wonder Years of the Belgian Avant-Garde, 1918-1939 (De Nieuwe Wereld, De wonderjaren van de Belgische avant-garde, Meulenhoff: 2010), a research book on the cultural criticism of the Belgian artistic avant-garde in the 1920s and 1930s. Currently, she is writing on photobooks and the urban imagination in 1920s Berlin. 

She has held visiting appointments at the University of California Berkeley, Columbia University, and the Humboldt-University in Berlin. A past recipient of Getty, Humboldt-Stiftung, Goethe Institut and B.A.E.F. fellowships, she was educated at the University of Leuven in Belgium and the Humboldt-University in Berlin.