Marina M. Álvarez
PhD Candidate, Modern and Contemporary Mexican & Latinx Art
Pronouns: she/her/ella
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About
Marina M. Álvarez is a curator, scholar, and an educator. She was a 2026 Latino Studies Predoctoral Fellow at the Smithsonian American Art Museum supported by the National Museum of the American Latino. The year prior she was a Crossing Latinidades Mellon Humanities Research Fellow. From 2021-2023, she was the Andrew W. Mellon Visual Arts Curatorial Assistant at the National Museum of Mexican Art in Chicago, Illinois, and in 2019 she was a Latino Museum Studies Fellow at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History. And in 2023, she was a Richard E. Greenleaf Library Scholar through the Latin American and Iberian Institute (LAII) at the University of New Mexico.
Marina holds an MA in Spanish Language and Literatures from Loyola University Chicago, and is pursuing a Ph.D. in Art History from the University of Illinois Chicago. At UIC, she is examining twentieth century Mexican, Indigenous, and Chicana/o/x art through decolonial feminist theories. Her dissertation analyzes the understudied figure of la maestra rural in postervolutionary Mexican art to understand how language is visualized, and how contemporary Indigenous and Latinx/Chicanx artists contend with Indigenous language loss and retention efforts. She has also published articles on the political potential of feminist graffiti on both sides of the U.S.-México border; her article, "Monumentality and Anticolonial Resistance: Feminist Graffiti in Mexico" was published with Public Art Dialogue in 2022. Apart from her scholarly and creative ventures, Marina loves to teach, mentor, and guide other first-generation college students.
Selected Publications
Marina M. Álvarez, “Monumentality and Anticolonial Resistance: Feminist Graffiti in Mexico,” Public Art Dialogue 12.2 (2022): 178-194.
Selected Presentations
"The Sentimentalization of La Maestra Rural: Race, Gender and Violence in the Taller de Gráfica Popular", University of New Mexico Latin American and Iberian Institute, August 17, 2023.
"Mexican Muralism Lecture", How Did Art Become Modern? course taught by Artie Foster at School of the Art Institute of Chicago, March 8, 2024.
"Teaching the Language of Fugitivity: Elizabeth Catlett and the Taller de Gráfica Popular (1946-1969)”, Smithsonian American Art Museum, May 22, 2026.