The most influential international curators specialized of Puerto Rico Art



By Edwin Velázquez Collazo 

This list includes some curators specialized in the world of Puerto Rican art who have a great influence on the Caribbean and Latin American art of the United States and internationally.


1. MARIA ELENA ORTIZ (b.1984)

María Elena Ortiz is Associate Curator at the Pérez Art Museum Miami (PAMM), where she curated At the Crossroads: Critical Film and Video from the Caribbean (2014) and the upcoming exhibition, Firelei Báez (2015). Previously, she worked as the Curator of Contemporary Arts at the Sala de Arte Público Siqueiros in Mexico City, where she organized several projects including Carlos Motta, The Shape of Freedom and Rita Ponce de León: David. Ortiz has also collaborated with institutions such as New Langton Arts, San Francisco; Teorética, San Jose, Costa Rica; the Museum of Craft and Folk Art, San Francisco; and Tate Modern, London. In 2012, she curated Wherever You Roam at the Museum of Latin American Art, Long Beach. Ortiz has contributed to writing platforms such as Fluent Collaborative, Curating Now, and Dawire. She has a Masters in Curatorial Practice from the California College of the Arts (2010). In 2014, she was the recipient of the The Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros (CPPC) and Independent Curators International (ICI) Travel Award for Central America and the Caribbean. As part of this research, Ortiz will be presenting an upcoming screening program titled, Video Islands, at Anthology Film Archives in New York.

2. TAINA B CARAGOL

Is Curator of Painting and Sculpture and of Latino Art and History at the National Portrait Gallery at the Smithsonian Institute.  Since 2013 she has led the effort to increase the representation of Latino historical figures and artists at the museum, adding over 170 portraits to the collection. She was the lead curator for Portraiture Now: Staging the Self (which traveled to New York and Albuquerque in 2015), curated One Life: Dolores Huerta, and co-curated The Face of Battle: Americans at War, 9/11-Present. Most recently, she co-curated with Asma Naeem UnSeen: Our Past in a New Light, Ken Gonzales-Day and Titus Kaphar. Currently, she is co-curating with NPG Historian Kate Lemay the exhibition 1898: The American Imperium, on the topic of American expansionism at the turn of the 20th century.

Before joining Smithsonian, Caragol was Curator of Education at Museo de Arte de Ponce in Puerto Rico in 2010. In 2007 she was a researcher at University of Essex, England for the investigation Latin American Art in the UK: History, Historiography, Specificity. From 2003 to 2007 she was Latin American bibliographer for the Museum of Modern Art.

Caragol earned her Ph.D. at the Graduate Center, City University of New York in 2013 with a dissertation titled: “Boom and Dust: The Rise of Latin American and Latino Art in New York Exhibition Venues and Auction Houses, 1970s–1980s.” She has published articles on the impact of exhibitions, archives, and the art market in the validation of art histories.

3. MARISOL NIEVES (b.1965)

VP, Specialist, Latin American Art at Christie's (actuality - 2011), Assistant Vice President of the Latin American (2008-2011) Art department at Sotheby's. Has over fifteen years of experience working in the Contemporary and Latin American Art fields. Most recently she served as Curator of the Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico (MAPR) in San Juan where she organized such critically acclaimed exhibitions as The Figurative Impulse: Works from The UBS Art Collection (2005), Dzine: Beautiful Otherness (2006,) and the new works series, Sala de Proyectos @ MAPR, highlighting new art by emerging local and international artists, including Edra Soto (2005), Allora & Calzadilla (2006), Anthony Goicolea (2006) and the forthcoming Milton Rosa-Ortiz (2006).

Prior to her tenure at MAPR, she held the positions of Director of Visual Arts at The Americas Society in New York, a non-profit organization with a stellar exhibition record in the field of Latin American art, and Senior Curator at The Bronx Museum of the Arts (BxMA) where she oversaw the Museum’s collection partially devoted to Twentieth Century and Contemporary Latino and Latin American Art. At BxMA she also organized numerous exhibitions and publications, including solo projects of the work of Rimer Cardillo (1998), Carlos Garaicoa (2000), María Elena González (2002), Liliana Porter (1992), Ernesto Pujol (1997), Juan Sánchez (1998) Valeska Soares (2003), and Judi Werthein (2002). In 2005-06, she co-organized El Museo’s Bienal; The (S)Files presented at El Museo del Barrio, New York and Museo de Arte de Puerto Rico. She has received numerous distinctions, most recently ArtTable’s New Leadership in the Visual Arts Award. Ms. Nieves currently serves on the advisory boards of the Center for Books Arts, En Foco, Inc., and The UBS Art Collection.

Nieves received an MA in 19th and 20th Century Art History and Criticism from the State University of New York at Stony Brook and a BA in Art History from the University of Puerto Rico at Rio Piedras.




4. MARI CARMEN RAMÍREZ (b.1955) 

Is a Wortham Curator of Latin American Art at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. She has been a curator for more than 30 years.She studied Art history at the University of Puerto Rico. Already she would work in museums while being a student, something she would go on to do while completing her graduate work. She did her graduate studies in Art as well and received both her Master of Arts and Phd at the University of Chicago. She was curator of Latin American art at the Jack S. Blanton Museum of Art at the University of Texas at Austin (1989–2000) and director of the Museum of Anthropology at the University of Puerto Rico (1985–88). She worked at the Ponce museum of art before returning to complete her Phd at the University of Chicago.

Once returning again to Puerto Rico, she went on to become the Director of the University of Puerto Rico Art Museum - at the time she was the youngest to have been given that position. This experience taught her that she didn't want to be the direct of any museum. Ramírez has curated numerous exhibitions of Latin American art including Carlos Cruz-Diez: Color in Space and Time (2011); Joaquín Torres-García: Constructing Abstraction with Wood (2009-10); North Looks South: Building the Latin American Collection (2009); Dimensions of Constructive Art in Brazil: The Adolpho Leirner Collection (2007); Hélio Oiticica: The Body of Color (2006-07); Gego: Between Transparency and the Invisible (2005-07); Heterotopías: medio siglo sin lugar: 1918-1968 (with Héctor Olea, 2000); Global Conceptualism: Points of Origin (1999). In tandem with Héctor Olea, she curated Inverted Utopias: Avant-Garde Art in Latin America (MFAH, 2004) awarded by the International Association of Art Critics as the “Best Thematic Museum Show Nationally” in the USA. In 1997 Ramírez received the Peter Norton Family Foundation Award for Curatorial Excellence.

5. SUSANA TORRUELLA LEVAL

Was Director of El Museo del Barrio, the nation’s leading Puerto Rican, Latino and Latin American Museum, from 1994 –2002, after serving there as Chief Curator for four years. She was named Director Emerita of El Museo del Barrio by the Board of Trustees in May 2002.

Ms. Torruella Leval, born in Buenos Aires and raised in Puerto Rico, has worked as an art writer and curator of Puerto Rican, Latino and Latin American contemporary art in New York City since 1970. She received a Bachelor of Arts degree in art history from Manhattanville College in 1966 and an M.A. from New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts in 1973, completing all doctoral coursework there.

After receiving the Hunter College President’s Medal for the Arts in May 1995 she was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from Pace University in May 2000. She has taught at The Cooper Union (1992-95), in the Museum Studies program at NYU (1995), and served as Advisory Faculty of the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College. In Fall 2008 she was Adjunct Faculty at the Steinhardt School of Visual Arts Administration at NYU; in 2009, she taught in the Macaulay Honors Program at Hunter College.

In 2001-2, Ms. Torruella Leval served as Chair of the Cultural Institutions Group,and as Vice President and President Elect of the Association of Art Museum Directors. She served on the following Boards: the American Academy in Rome (1993-96); the Alliance for the Arts, (1998); the American Association of Museums, (1998-2000); the Municipal Arts Society (2000); The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, (1998-2001); The Museum of Jewish Heritage (2003-2006). She was a member of the Overseers' Committee to Visit the Art Museums at Harvard College (1998-2001) and of the Visiting Committee of the Getty Center in Los Angeles (1999–2001). She served as a Council Member of the New York State Council on the Arts, (2002-2006), and as a member of the Panel for Educational Policy of the City of New York (2002-2004).

Ms. Leval is currently a member of the Boards of: The Metropolitan Museum of Art (1988-93; 2002-); Dreamyard (2006-); and The Aperture Foundation (2006-). Since 2008 she joined the Advisory Boards of CENTRO, the Center for Puerto Rican Studies at Hunter College, and the virtual Mirror of Race Project.


6. MARCELA GUERRERO

Marcela Guerrero is Assistant Curator at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York. From 2014 to 2017 she worked as Curatorial Fellow at the Hammer Museum in Los Angeles, where she was involved in the much-lauded exhibition Radical Women: Latin American Art, 1960-1985, organized as part of the Getty Foundation’s Pacific Standard Time: LA/LA initiative and guest-curated by Cecilia Fajardo-Hill and Andrea Giunta. Prior to joining the Hammer, she worked in the Latin American and Latino art department at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, where she served as research coordinator for the International Center for the Arts of the Americas. 

Guerrero’s writing has appeared in exhibition catalogues and in art journals such as caa.reviews, ArtNexus, Caribbean Intransit: The Arts Journal, Gulf Coast: A Journal of Literature and Fine Arts, Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies, and Diálogo. This summer Guerrero will make her exhibition debut at the Whitney with Pacha, Llaqta, Wasichay: Indigenous Space, Modern Architecture, New Art (provisional title), a group show that gives center stage to contemporary art practices that highlight indigenous thinking around the built environment. Born and raised in Puerto Rico, Guerrero holds a PhD in art history from the University of Wisconsin, Madison.

7. YASMIN RAMIREZ

Holds a Ph.D. in Art History from the Graduate Center of the City of New York. Currently an independent curator, Dr. Ramirez is has collaborated on curatorial projects with The Bronx Museum, El Museo Del Barrio; The Loisaida Center; The Studio Museum in Harlem, Franklin Furnace and Taller Boricua. Her critically acclaimed exhibitions and panels include: Martin Wong: Human Instamatic (2015); Presente: The Young Lords in New York (2015); The Puerto Rican Art Workers and the Construction of the Nuyorican Art Movement (2014); Re-Membering Loisaida: On Archiving and the Lure of the Retro Lens (2009); Esto A Veces Tiene Nombre: Latin@ Art Collectives in a Post-Movement Millennium (2008); Voices From Our Communities: Perspectives on a Decade of Collecting at El Museo del Barrio (2000); Pressing the Point: Parallel Expressions in the Graphic Arts of the Chicano and Puerto Rican Movements (1999).

Yasmin Ramirez's published essays include: The Young Lords Way (2015) Snap Shots: A Short History of the Association of Hispanic Arts (2013); The Creative Class of Color in New York (2009); The Activist Legacy of Puerto Rican Artists in New York and the Art Heritage of Puerto Rico (2007); Puerto Rican Light: To Allora and Calzadilla (2006); Nuyorican Visionary: Jorge Soto and the evolution of an Afro-Taino aesthetic at Taller Boricua (2005); and Parallel Lives, Striking Differences: Notes on Chicano and Puerto Rican Graphic Arts of the 1970s (1999). She is currently writing a book on art movements in East Harlem.


8. MICHELE FIEDLER (b.1981)


Is a curator and writer based in Mexico City, where she is the Curator at Sala de Arte Publico Siqueiros. Born in Puerto Rico, she received an MA in Curatorial Practice from California College of the arts in 2011. Her current research is centered in the emergence of neologisms, shifting meanings, subjectivity, and the power of popular culture. She collaborates with Kadist Art Foundation on a series of video Interviews of Latin American artists and is contributing research of the 1990s art scene in Monterrey for the upcoming exhibition Below the Underground: Renegade Art and Action in Mexico in the 1990s, curated by Irene Tsatsos and taking place at The Armory Center in Pasadena, CA for the Getty’s LA/LA initiative. Michele Fiedler will be Disjecta’s sixth Curator-in-Residence starting this September.

From 2006 to 2009 she ran Galería 356 in San Juan, a gallery space focused on showing emerging Puerto Rican artists with a parallel calendar of performance, video, and sound projects. In 2009 she worked with artists and curators Abdiel Segarra Rios and Vanessa Hernández Gracia in the collective La Nómada, which provided an independent platform for curatorial and artistic practices. She graduated from California College of the Arts's Curatorial Practice Master. In 2010 She worked with artist Julio César Morales and the Museo Tamayo in Mexico City to produce Morales'Interrupted Passage and the museum's A Place Outside of History. She How Far Can You Push a Sound Without an Image? (2010) an aural presentation of artist’s sound pieces and songs in the form of a radio broadcast. The show was presented at Queens' Nails projects in San Francisco, Galeria Tijuana in Sao Paulo, Hunter College in New York, and featured in Independent Curator's International. She co-curated the exhibition God Only Knows Who the Audience Is at the Wattis Institute, San Francisco (2011), a show that focused on North American West Coast performance practices in the 70s and 80s as well as their mediation through documentation. She worked with the curators Sharon Lerner and Xioayu Weng on the project Mission Afterviews, funded by Southern Exposures' Alternative Exposure Grant (2012).


9. CARLA ACEVEDO YATES

Associate Curator of The Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum at Michigan State University (Broad MSU), researcher, and art critic based in San Juan, Puerto Rico and New York. Acevedo-Yates was a recipient of the 2015 Creative Capital/Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant. Recent projects include Corporalidades and Crónica(o) at Fundación Casa Cortés, Soy Isla: A conversation on and around Zilia Sánchez at Artists Space Books and Talks, and Turn on the bright lights featuring Damian Catera, Jason Mena, Felix Gonzalez-Torres, Kajsa Dahlberg, Trevor Paglen, and Adán Vallecillo at the Hessel Museum of Art, a Ramapo Curatorial Prize exhibition. Her writing has appeared in Art Agenda, Small Axe: A Caribbean Platform for Criticism, ARTPULSE, La Tempestad, Mousse, and South as a State of Mind. She was a curatorial resident at R.I.C. (Santiago, Chile) in 2015 and Espaço Fonte (Recife, Brazil) in 2014. Acevedo-Yates has an M.A. in curatorial studies and contemporary art from the Center for Curatorial Studies at Bard College and a B.A. in Spanish and Latin American cultures from Barnard College at Columbia University.

10. LOURDES RAMOS

President and CEO, Museum of Latino American Art, actuality - 2017. Executive Director and Chief Curator Museum of Art of Puerto Rico, 2005 – 2017 she managed both the museum’s financials and curatorial program, helping organize exhibitions, including shows devoted to Puerto Rican impressionist Francisco Oller and Jean-Michel Basquiat. Prior to her tenure at the Museo de Arte, she was the Director of the San Juan City Museum and the National Collection of Puerto Rico at the Institute of Puerto Rican Culture. She holds a bachelor of arts in fine arts from the Interamerican University of Puerto Rico, a master of fine arts from Illinois State University, and a doctor of philosophy in fine arts with a concentration in arts administration from the University of Barcelona in Spain. Dr. Ramos is also an accreditation commissioner for the American Alliance of Museums, has participated in the Museum Leadership Program hosted by the Getty Leadership Institute, and is a certified fine art appraiser (USPAP).


11. SOFIA S. REESER DEL RÍO (b.1989)


Is an independent curator from Culebra, Puerto Rico. She held the Curatorial Assistant and Programs Coordinator role at El Museo del Barrio in New York City between 2012 - 2017. Sofía developed and managed the Artists in Residency program at El Museo, the Lucky Sevens Art Salon, and the Portfolio Reviews. She has worked on important exhibitions including Antonio Lopez: Future Funk Fashion (2016), Illusive Eye (2016), Marisol (2015), Pa'Lante: Young Lords in New York (2015), Museum Started Kit: Open with Care (2013), La Bienal(2013), Caribbean Crossroads of the World (2012). Most notably she was invited to work on the exhibition Yoko Ono: Land of Hope in Mexico City, at Museo Memoria y Tolerancia, with curator Gunnar B. Kvaran, and artist Yoko Ono and as curator of the Puerto Rican region for the international videoart festival Between Islands (Entre Islas); project manager of the book, Imago Mundi - Caribbean: Together Apart, a collaboration between El Museo del Barrio and the Benetton Foundation. Between 2017 and 2018,as an independent curator she organized three exhibitions, Auto-Organizar/Self-Organize, at Bronx Art Space, NY, Still Here, at Julia de Burgos Art Center, NY, Localidades Alternas/Alternate Locations I & II, MECANISMO, MECA, Puerto Rico.

She studied Philosophy and Humanities at the University of Puerto Rico in Rio Piedras, she continued her studies and received a BFA and Art History minor from Pratt Institute and is now pursuing an interdisciplinary Master’s degree from Universidad Carlos III in Madrid. Sofía has been involved in programs with Marqueta Retoña, Los Muros Hablan (Walls Speak), the artist residency, TrueQué in Ayampe, Ecuador, and most recently her participation as Curatorial Assistant for the exhibition Mandela 100 at Casa de Africa in Cuba.

12. NATALIA VIERA SALGADO

Is an independent curator working between Puerto Rico and New York. She received her MA in Curatorial Studies from the School of Visual Arts (SVA) in the spring 2018 and serves as archivist in charge of the Art Program at the Center for Puerto Rican Studies (CENTRO), Hunter College, New York. Her curatorial practice focuses on the intersections between historical, archival material, and pedagogy. Her inclination towards social issues, decolonialism, and environmental theories in relation to contemporary art has led her to work with many artists from Latin America and the Caribbean. She has worked in the commercial sector and at various non-profit organizations and government institutions between Puerto Rico, Colombia and New York. Viera served as curatorial assistant for the 4th Poly / Graphic Triennial of San Juan: Latin America and the Caribbean (2015) and as curatorial assistant at Flora Ars + Natura for the exhibition Energ(ética)(2017), curated by José Roca. Earlier this year Viera was the Curatorial Fellow for the Virginia Overton exhibition Built (2018) at Socrates Sculpture Park. 

In 2018 Viera also worked with artist Joseph Buckley’s exhibition, Traitor Muscle at Art in General. Recent projects include Isla Imaginaria (2018), an exhibition that questioned notions of paradise and the idea of progress in Puerto Rico and the repercussions on its colonial subjects. The exhibition included the talk Colonial Imaginaries: on Brown Poetics and the Damné which offered a look at the texts Poetics of Relation by Édouard Glissant and The Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon, Ren Ellis Neyra and Eduardo Rivera Pichardo. Other pedagogical projects include leading the workshop Breaking and Unveiling the Immigration Glossary of Severalty exploring the complexity of immigrant identity in the US with a collective of Hispanic curators she cofounded, Se Habla Español, held at The 8th Floor, at the Selly & Donald Rubin Foundation.

13. MARINA REYES FRANCO (b.1984)

Is an independent curator living and thinking from San Juan, Puerto Rico. She received a BA in Art History from the University of Puerto Rico and a MA in Argentine and Latin American Art History at IDAES-UNSAM in Buenos Aires, Argentina. Her master's thesis expanded the notion of politically motivated art and literature in 1970’s Puerto Rico, as evidenced by gestures, performances and publications that’ve had an unrecognized yet lasting impact until the 2004 San Juan Poly/Graphic Triennial.She is co-founder and former director of La Ene, a museum-as-project in Buenos Aires. 

Recent curatorial projects include: "Watch your step / Mind your head" ifa Galerie-Berlin; co-curating The "2nd Grand Tropical Biennial"; in Loíza, Puerto Rico; “Calibán,” a selection of Puerto Rican contemporary artists at the Museum of Contemporary Art in San Juan (2014) and co-curating “Sucursal,” an exhibition of the collection of La Ene, at the Museum of Latin American Art in Buenos Aires. As curator and researcher, she has focused on the work of Esteban Valdés, artistic and literary manifestations on the frontier of political action, new museology, and the impact of tourism in cultural production in the Caribbean. She received the 2017 CPPC Travel Award for Central America and the Caribbean, and was nominated for ICI’s 2014 Independent Vision Curatorial Award


14. BRENDA TORRES-FIGUEROA (b. 1976)

Is an Interdisciplinary artist, educator and curator living in Chicago since year 2000. Graduated from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (MFA 04) and University of Puerto Rico Rio Piedras (BA 00)- Brenda currently teaches Integrated Arts at the Chicago High School of the Arts and has worked as curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art of Puerto Rico (MAC) and has coordinated of Barrio Arts Fest (2010-2013) among other exhibitions at the National Museum of Puerto Rican Arts and Culture. She has composed and published several curatorial essays for individual artists and museums including artists such as Rafael Trelles, Victor Vázquez and Norah Hernandez.  In 2014 co-Founded and became the creative director of Freedom Effect LLC. In 2015 was featured in the Chicago Artist Month with the video project of Candela co-produced in collaboration with Bomba con Buya. 



15. ELIZABETH FERRER

Is a curator and writer specialising in Latino and Mexican art and photography. She has held the position of Director of Contemporary Art at BRIC Arts | Media | Bklyn since 2007.

Ferrer has curated major exhibitions of modern and contemporary art for numerous venues in the United States and Mexico, and has written and lectured extensively on topics related to her fields of interest. Exhibitions she has curated have appeared at such venues as BRIC Rotunda Gallery, the Americas Society, the UBS Art Gallery, and the Aperture Foundation Gallery, all in New York; the Smithsonian Institution, Washington D. C.; the Snite Museum, Notre Dame University; and MARCO, Monterrey, Mexico. She is curator of En Foco In Focus: Selected Works from the Permanent Collection, an exhibition currently travelling in the United States. Other major exhibition projects include travelling retrospectives of the photographers Mariana Yampolsky and Lola Alvarez Bravo, as well as of the pioneering Mexican modernist painter María Izquierdo.

Elizabeth Ferrer has also contributed to authored books for such publishers as the University of Texas Press, the Aperture Foundation, the Museum of Modern Art, and Universe Books/Rizzoli. Her monographic work Lola Alvarez Bravo was a New York Times 2006 Notable Book of the Year.

16. DEBORAH CULLEN

Is an American art curator with a specialization in Latin American and Caribbean art and director of The Bronx Museum of the Arts .Cullen has been the director and chief curator of the Wallach Art Gallery at Columbia University in New York since 2012. In fall 2014, Cullen curated the first retrospective on printmaker Robert Blackburn (1920-2003) for the David C. Driskell Center for the Study of the Visual Arts and Culture of African Americans and the African Diaspora, at University of Maryland, College Park. She wrote her dissertation for CUNY Graduate Center on the legendary Jamaican-American printmaker. 

She curated Interruption: The 30th Biennial of Graphic Arts (Ljubljana, Slovenia, fall 2013). In 2012, Cullen was Chief Curator of The Hive: The Third Poligraphic Trienal of San Juan (Puerto Rico). Previously, Cullen served at El Museo del Barrio, New York, for over 15 years. As Director of Curatorial Programs, her projects included participating in the curatorial team and co-editing the 500-page anthology, Caribbean: Crossroads of the World (2012); in addition to curating Retro/Active: The Work of Rafael Ferrer (2010, and authoring the monograph Rafael Ferrer for UCLA’s Chicano Studies Research Center), Nexus New York: Latin/American Artists in the Modern Metropolis (2009), and Arte (no es) Vida: Actions by Artists of the Americas 1960-2000 (2008), for which she received a 2006 Emily Hall Tremaine Exhibition Award.

17. CHERYL HARTUP


Hartup is an art historian specializing in the art of Latin America and the Caribbean and Associate Curator of Academic Programs and Latin American Art of the Jordan Schnitzer Museum of Art at the University of Oregon. She holds an M.A. in Latin American Studies and a certificate in museum studies from New York University (1990 and 1991), and an M.A. in art history from the University of Texas at Austin (1997).

Hartup has held curatorial positions at the Museum of Contemporary Hispanic Art in New York City, the Dallas Museum of Art, and the Miami Art Museum, now the Pérez Art Museum Miami. From 2005 to 2012, she served as chief curator at the Museo de Arte de Ponce in Puerto Rico. At the Dallas Museum of Art she curated the exhibition “Indigenismo to Modernism: The Art of Post-Revolutionary Mexico, 1920-1950,” in Miami she curated exhibitions featuring new work by Jac Leirner, Fabian Marcaccio, Cildo Meireles, and Glexis Novoa, among other artists. At the Museo de Arte de Ponce, Hartup co-curated such exhibitions as “Mi Puerto Rico: Master Painters of the Island, 1780-1952” and “El Greco to Goya: Masterpieces from the Prado Museum.”



In addition to her curatorial expertise, she also writes reviews for “ArtNexus Magazine,” artforum.com, and “Visión Doble.”

18. PACO BARRAGÁN


Is curator of visual arts at Centro Cultural Matucana 100, Santiago de Chile, and Contributing Editor for ARTPULSE magazine, and is currently pursuing a Doctorate degree at Universidad de Salamanca (USAL). Some of the exhibitions that he has curated in 2015 are: Alfredo Jaar: May 1st, 2011; Intimate Strangers: Politics as Celebrity, Celebrity as Politics; Political Dali: Communism, Falangism and Francoism in Salvador Dali’s Life; and Wir sind Utopia: the Artist as Activist, all at Matucana 100; Guided Tour: Artist, Museum, Spectator at MUSAC in Leon, Spain, 2015; and Erwin Olaf: The Empire of Illusion at the Museo Castagnino-MACRO in Rosario, Argentina, 2015. Paco Barragán is author of The Art to come/El arte que viene (2002), Subastas Siglo XXI, and The Art Fair Age/La era de las ferias, published by CHARTA in June 2008. He is also editor of Don’t Call it Performance (Salamanca Ciudad de Cultura, 2004), Sustainabilities/Sostenibilidades (CHARTA, 2008) and co-editor of When a Painting moves… Something Must be Rotten! (CHARTA, 2011). Lives in Santiago de Chile, works internationally.

19. PABLO LEÓN DE LA BARRA (b.1972)


León de la Barra has curated or cocurated more than a dozen exhibitions in the past decade, at institutions including the David Roberts Art Foundation and the Architecture Foundation, London; Centre de Art Contemporaine, Geneva, and Kunsthalle Zürich; apexart and Art in General, New York; Casa Luis Barragán, Casa del Lago, and Museo Tamayo, Mexico City; Museo La Ene, Buenos Aires; Museu Carmen Miranda, Rio de Janeiro; Beta Local, San Juan; Centro Cultural de España, Guatemala City; Casa Encendida, Madrid, Spain; and Proyecto AMIL, Lima. In London, he was a founding member of 24-7, a collective of artists and curators (2002–05); artistic director of Blow de la Barra Gallery, London (2005–08); and founder and cocurator of the community art space White Cubicle Gallery, London (2005–12). He is also the founder of the Novo Museo Tropical, and was the curator of the first Bienal Tropical in San Juan (2011). León de la Barra serves on the advisory committees of the Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation, Miami, and the Fundación Luis Barragán, Mexico.

León de la Barra has lectured widely and participated in many international symposiums including the Serpentine Gallery Marathon, London (2008, 2010, 2011); Cisneros Seminar, Caracas (2012); Temas Centrales, Teorética, Costa Rica (2012); Rethinking Latin American Art Symposium, MOLA/LA, MALI/Lima (2011); Video Brasil, Sao Paulo (2011); and The Curators, Witte de With, Rotterdam (2009). In 2012, León de la Barra received the first Colección Patricia Phelps de Cisneros Travel Award for Central America and the Caribbean in honor of Virginia Pérez-Ratton.


20. ELVIS FUENTES


Elvis Fuentes is Ph.D. Candidate in Art History at Rutgers University and independent curator based in New York. Graduated from the University of Havana in Art History (1999), he has worked as curator at the Ludwig Foundation of Cuba, Havana (1999-2002), the Institute of Puerto Rican Culture, San Juan (2004-2006), and El Museo del Barrio, New York (2006-2012). In 2005, Fuentes won the Grand Prix at the XXV Ljubljana Biennial of Graphic Arts for his curatorial project, Print as Metaphor. His research on Cuban American artist Felix Gonzalez-Torres in Puerto Rico (1977-1986) led to rediscovering some early works, including five videos from 1980. During his tenure at El Museo del Barrio, he co-curated two iterations of El Museo’s Bienal of New York’s Latino Art (2007 and 2011), and directed the mega-project, Caribbean: Crossroads of the World, presented simultaneously at El Museo del Barrio, The Studio Museum in Harlem and The Queens Museum. Fuentes is a fellow of the Mellon International Dissertation Research Fellowship from the Social Science Research Council (2015-2016), and his dissertation research focuses on the impact of Soviet visual culture in Cuban art (1959-1991).




21. JUANITA LANZO

Is a visual artist and curator based in the Bronx and NYC. She graduated from City College of NY (MFA) and University of Puerto Rico (BFA) and lives in East Harlem, NYC. She is Longwood Arts Projects’ Director and Curator since 2008 - 2018 where she has organized over 40 group and solo thematic exhibitions in collaboration with emerging artists, mostly of color, women, emerging guest curators and the Hostos Community College in the Bronx. Her curatorial practice has focused on issues of gender, race, immigration and socio-political issues, and the LGBTQ community.

Ms. Lanzo has also served as a panelist for NYC Dept. of Cultural Affairs, Percent for Art Program and MTA, Arts for Transit, Lower East Side Printshop and Center for the Book Arts.

She graduated from City College in NY (MFA 2004) in Printmaking and Painting and from University of Puerto Rico (BFA 1996) in Printmaking and Drawing.


22. BENJAMIN ORTIZ

Is an independent curator specializing in American/Connecticut, Caribbean and Latin American artists. After leaving HCC in 1990, he went to the Smithsonian Institution Office of Museums Programs. This was subsequently followed by studies at the Worcester Art Museum in Massachusetts and New York University, with Ben completing his Bachelor of Arts and Cultural Studies at the University of Vermont. Since graduating, Ben has curated a number of shows including exhibits at The University of Connecticut, The Discovery Museum, and the New Britain Museum of American Art.

A former curator at the Housatonic Museum of Art, Ben returned to curate his most recent exhibition titled Body and Soul. This exhibition featured 50 works of art that focused on the dual nature of humanity: the body and the soul. The works are a collection of prints, paintings, photographs, and sculpture with an emphasis on works by Latin American art. The fifty works included in the exhibit have been donated to the Housatonic Museum of Art by Ben Ortiz and Victor P. Torchia, Jr. in memory of Ben’s beloved brother, John Eloy Ortiz (1966-2008), to mark what would have been his fiftieth birthday. At the opening of Body and Soul, Ben was awarded the title of honorary alumnus in arts & sciences in recognition of his long standing relationship with Housatonic and the community.

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