Marcelo Gabriel Yáñez

Marcelo is a PhD candidate studying the art of the United States (18th-20th century) and the history and theory of photography. He holds a BA in Art History with high honors and minors in German and Medieval Studies from New York University. His undergraduate honors thesis, titled 'On Peter Hujar, Steve Lawrence, and Newspaper(1969-1971),’ analyzed a network of artists in downtown New York and their participation in an obscure no-word picture tabloid. He adapted his thesis into the book Newspaper (New York: Primary Information, 2023). He has worked at the Fales Library, the Brooklyn Museum, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and as a contracted researcher and archivist for artists such as Penny Arcade, AA Bronson, Danny Fields, and others. 

He is currently writing a dissertation about artists on Fire Island during the 20th century. Chapter focuses include the work of PaJaMa (Paul Cadmus, Jared French, and Margaret French), Alfred Leslie, Paul Thek, and Betty Beaumont. Other on-going projects include research and writing on the Turkish-American photographer Sheyla Baykal (1944-1997) the Puerto Rican painter René Santos (1954-1986), the architect and artist Paul F Williams (1925-1993), as well as a discographic project about early recorded music in Cuba and Puerto Rico. 

His research has received support from the Smithsonian Institutions and the Archives of American Art, the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, the Fox-Aarons Foundation, the Association of Research Libraries, and the NYU Center for the Humanities.