Independent Curators International announced today that Miguel A. Lopez, the chief curator of TEOR/éTica in San Jose, Costa Rica, has been named the 2016 winner of its Independent Vision Curatorial Award, which recognizes international curators who have shown early in their careers an “exceptional creativity and prescience in exhibition-making, research, and related writing.”
Lopez was chosen out of a pool of 12 other nominated curators from around the world. The biannual prize, which includes a $3,000 stipend towards a new project, will be awarded to Lopez at ICI’s annual benefit in New York by this year’s juror, Franklin Sirmans, the director of the Pérez Art Museum Miami.
In a statement, Sirmans credited Lopez and his fellow nominees for their work on projects that “will move forward the conversation on the history of art while disrupting the contemporary moment.” In describing Lopez, Sirmans said he uses “feminist and queer re-articulations of history from a Southern Hemisphere perspective” as “an important young voice whose past projects suggest a brilliant future.”