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José Antonio Navarrete, curator

Cuban-born, resided in Venezuela for two decades. He currently lives and works in Miami, Florida. He is a critic, researcher, and independent curator of culture and visual arts who also practices art in photography and video.

He has worked intensely as a curator in Latin America, the Caribbean, and the United States. His range of professional experience includes working in museums and art institutions, curating exhibitions, editing for art publications, writing and lecturing.

He was the curator of the exhibitions La Fotografía en Cuba Exposición Retrospectiva, 1983-1984, and La Vanguardia. Surgimiento del arte moderno en Cuba, 1988-1989, both at the Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes in Havana, Cuba. In Venezuela, he curated the festival Encuentro de Fotografía Latinoamericana, Caracas, 1993, and exhibitions such as Arte en libertad: Salón 1958, Museo Alejandro Otero, Caracas, 1998, and Leo Matiz, el sentido de lo moderno, Galería Fundación Previsora, Caracas, 2007.

He was a consultant of the División de Pintura y Escultura, Museo de Bellas Artes, Caracas, Venezuela, 1995-1997, and the director of División de Curaduría, Educación y Biblioteca, Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Caracas Sofía Imber, 2003-2004.

From 1996 to 2006 he was the editor of Extra-Cámara magazine, specialized in Latin American and Venezuelan photography.

He has contributed with texts to numerous magazines, catalogues, academic publications, and newspapers. Among his several books he has published Fotografiando en América Latina. Ensayos de crítica histórica, Fundación para la Cultura Urbana, Venezuela, 2009.

Recently, he delivered a series of conferences, Modernism Rises. Modern Art and Architecture in Cuba: the Origins, 1920’s-1930’s, at 801 Projects, Miami, Florida. He is the curator of Art Media Gallery in Miami, Florida, which focus on contemporary art, photography and video.

He was the curator of En el lugar de lo dicho. Exploraciones en el archivo discursivo de la fotografía, organized by Centro de Fotografia and exhibited at Museo Nacional de Artes Visuales, both in Montevideo, Uruguay from November 21th, 2013 to February 24th, 2014.

As part of an international academic team, he developed an investigation on the subject of Intellectual Networks: Art and Politics in Latin America, included in the "Connecting Art Histories” program of the JP Getty Foundation, USA, 2012-2013. His project focused on the connections between artists and intellectuals of Latin America and France during the 1920s of the twentieth century.

He has exhibited his artistic work from 2012.