(artwork: John Ahearn. image: Romina Hendlin)
Monxo López is a museum curator, urban thinker, educator, cartographer, and South Bronx-based environmental and urban justice activist. He currently is the Curator of Community Histories at the Museum of the City of New York where he previously served as a Mellon Foundation postdoctoral curatorial fellow.
He taught Latinx Studies and political science in Hunter College, and was a Mapping Fellow at the Design Trust for Public Spaces.
Monxo is a founding member of South Bronx Unite (a local urban and environmental justice organization), founding member and board member of the Mott Haven/Port Morris Community Land Stewards, the local Community Land Trust. He also currently serves as a board member of the Cooper Square Community Land Trust in the Lower East Side.
He is regularly invited to lecture and collaborate in urban planning and community organizing courses, and in architectural studios and juries for institutions such as Syracuse University, MIT, CUNY’s City College, Penn State, and Pratt Institute.
He holds a Ph.D. in political science from CUNY’s Graduate Center, and an MA from Université Laval in Québec, Canada. His academic research revolves around spatiality, mapping, social justice, political theory, and Latino communities. Monxo’s political writings on spatial and social justice have been published in Salon.com, LatinoRebels, and NACLA, among other media outlets; and my activist work has been profiled by The New York Times, UrbanOmnibus, and Corriere della Sera.
He was born and grew up in Puerto Rico, and lives in Mott Haven, the South Bronx.
Media
- 9/21/2024 – Monxo López, primer curador latino de MCNY, El País
- 9/21/2024 – Monxo’ López, the first Latino curator of MCNY, El País [English]
- 6/6/2024 – Byzantine Bembé: New York by Manny Vega, The New York Times
- 3/30/2024 – How a Curator from the Bronx Spends His Sundays, The New York Times
- 7/26/2022 – Land Power, Places Journal
- 6/1/2021 – New York is Back. Now it Has a Second Chance, The New York Times
- 1/10/2018 – Community Land Trusts, Urban Omnibus
- 11/5/2017 – Taking Back the Bronx
- 10/19/2017 – Decolonize the Caribbean, NACLA
- 9/3/2017 – When Gentrification Knocks on the Wrong Door, The New York Times
- 5/3/2017 – Design and Advocacy in the South Bronx, Urban Omnibus
- 3/22/2017 – Il prof, l’artista e il gommista che provano a salvare il Bronx, Corriere della Sera
- 1/23/2017 – Searching for Solutions in the Bronx on the Upper East Side, WNYC
- 6/3/2016 – Is the US Government Preparing for Political Violence in Puerto Rico?, Latino Rebels
- 8/9/2015 – Paul Krugman’s shameful colonialism: Why the progressive economist has Puerto Rico all wrong, Salon.com
Affiliations
- The Shape of Cities to Come Institute (SCCI), board member and co-founder
- Museum of the City of New York, Curator of Community Histories
- South Bronx Unite, co-founder
- Mott Haven – Port Morris Community Land Stewards, board member and co-founder
- Cooper Square Community Land Trust, board member
- The Clemente Soto Vélez Cultural and Educational Center (volunteer, advisor)