NEXT Curator
Marina Reyes Franco is a curator and writer based in Puerto Rico. She previously served as curator at the Museum of Contemporary Art of Puerto Rico (MAC) and, in 2010, co-founded La Ene in Buenos Aires, an institution she directed until 2014. She is currently the Curatorial Intensive Programs Manager at Independent Curators International and a member of the organizing team for La Gran Bienal Tropical.
Her curatorial practice focuses on underrepresented narratives and how tourism, colonial legacies, and economic conditions shape cultural production. Through exhibitions, collaborative projects, and commissions, she highlights critical perspectives on place, memory, and political imagination, with a special focus on the Caribbean and its diasporas.
At MAC, she curated projects such as Sunlight on the Sea Floor (with Paula Naughton), Puerto Rico Negrx (with María Elena Ortiz), El momento del yagrumo, and Tropical Is Political: Caribbean Art Under the Visitor Economy Regime (organized with Americas Society), as well as art commissions by Daniel Lind Ramos, Sofía Córdova, Tony Cruz Pabón, Julianny Ariza, La Vaughn Belle, Ulrik López Medel, and Eliazar Ortiz Roa.
A selection of exhibitions she has curated as an independent curator includes Resisting Paradise at Publica, San Juan, and Fonderie Darling, Montreal; Watch your step / Mind your head at ifa-Galerie Berlin; La Gran Bienal Tropical (2016 and 2025), Loíza; C32: Sucursal at MALBA, Buenos Aires; and numerous exhibitions at La Ene.