Pérez Art Museum of Miami
“We’re happy to welcome Naiomy to the PAMMily as the new DAMLI Curatorial Fellow,” said PAMM Director Franklin Sirmans. “Her background and experience in public programming, exhibition installation, public speaking, and more, will be valuable assets to this institution and help us to achieve our mission and vision to create a platform for diverse voices that is reflective of Miami’s multicultural community. We are grateful for the extraordinary support of the Walton Family and Ford Foundations and thankful to be playing a role in the diversification of the field.”
Read moreMaximilíano Durón - ARTNEWS
Naiomy Guerrero will be the inaugural curatorial fellow of the Pérez Art Museum Miami’s Diversifying Art Museum Leadership Initiative. Guerrero’s work as a writer and on Instagram has long highlighted the intersection of blackness with the larger discourse of Latinx and Latin American art, and how that intersectionality has often been marginalized.
Read moreNicole Ivy Director of Inclusion, American Alliance of Museums
Guerrero's tone was hopeful, confident, and inviting. But few could miss the urgency in her witty delivery. In that moment, a young, Dominican-American woman moved the conversation beyond the more abstract discussions of politics and power in order to focus the conversation in on the lives of the individual people museums serve. Museums can use Guerrero’s story and her mode of questioning as a prompt to consider who their neighbors are and pay attention to those times when members of the surrounding community aren’t part of the visitorship.
Read moreAnna Louie Sussman Art Market Editor, ARTSY
“I grew up poor, and I never want to be poor again,” she says, even if “that means not working in the art world because there isn’t a stable enough position.”Unlike some of her peers, Guerrero wasn’t able to fall back on a crucial resource: help from Mom and Dad.
Read moreWECEREMONY
If I had to describe myself I’d say calle pero elegant, which translates to ‘street/hood but elegant’ —its a lyric from Puerto Rican reggae ton artist Tego Calderon’s “Punto y Aparte” song. I’ve always felt at home with that phrase because it asserts that you can be from the hood and also have elegance, intellect, and be poppin’.
Read more Ayanna Legros – interdisciplinary scholar, educator, and cultural symposium producer and co-founder of the BASQUIAT: STILL FLY @ 55 Project – moderated a spectacular panel featuring four artists, writers, Basquiat peers, and cultural critics who explored Basquiat’s identity as an artist of color, a innovator in New York’s downtown art scene, and a member of a NoHo generation that defined and forever changed the neighborhood. Naiomy stressed that celebrating [Black] Latinx identities of artists like Basquiat can allow Latinx children, artists, and adults to see themselves in bold new ways and create new roadmaps for possibilities. By claiming Basquiat’s Latinx identity, the art community can begin telling the full story and allowing a more full range of artists and experiences to infuse the market.
Read moreSarah Blaskey Journalist, Miami Herald
“The Bronx is here,” said Guerrero. “And there’s art in the Bronx. And it never left. And there is no such thing as bringing it back because it’s always been here.” Hip Hop music and graffiti-style art trace their roots to the Bronx from a period long before big developers or collectors thought the area or the art were interesting. But times have changed and what was once considered vandalism in the South Bronx is now a lucrative art form around the world.
Read moreIsaac Kaplan Associate Editor, ARTSY
During the Q&A, Naiomy Guerrero, described her own experience growing up in New York City, one in which she was not made aware of the cultural wealth around her. She also drew a distinction between the on-paper commitments museums make to their community and what actually happens, asking Finkelpearl about how his agency’s forthcoming cultural plan for New York City might actually overcome these structural and historical challenges
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