Portrait by Louis Fratino in 2017 at Porsena, East Village
Marcelo Gabriel Yáñez (b. San Juan, PR, 1996)
is an art historian, photographer, and archivist working between New York and Puerto Rico. He holds a Ph.D. in Art History from Stanford University with a particular interest in the art of the United States and the Caribbean (19th-20th centuries) and the history and theory of photography. He works part-time for the Archives of American Art and as a professor in the Department of Art History at New York University.
He is currently completing a book manuscript derived from his dissertation, “The Disappearance of Landscape: Artists on Fire Island.” Part of the research on Paul Thek in Oakleyville will be adapted into an exhibition at the Watermill Center (August 29, 2026–March 20, 2027), organized with Noah Khoshbin, and published into a small book by the Watermill Center and MATTE Editions, forthcoming September 2026.
He works on the Archive of Sheyla Baykal with Penny Arcade and Steve Zehentner, and is the Archive’s consulting curator for the 2025-2027 Archive in Residence at Soft Network. He curated, with Arcade, the exhibition dearly Loved friends: Photographs by Sheyla Baykal, 1965-1990, which was named by Holland Cotter of The New York Times as one of the best exhibitions of 2025. He curated, with Arcade and Soft Network, Sheyla Baykal: Horizontal Thinking, at Participant Inc. (July 10-August 16, 2026).
Other projects include on-going research and writing on the architect and artist Paul F. Williams (1925-1993), including an edited volume of archival recording transcriptions titled The Gate Hill Cooperative Tapes, an extended essay on the Puerto Rican painter René Santos (1954-1986), as well as a discographical project about early recorded music in Cuba and Puerto Rico with Olvido Records, forthcoming late 2026.
He was a 2024-2025 Smithsonian Institution Predoctoral Fellow at the Archives of American Art.
He was the editor and writer of Newspaper, published by Primary Information in March 2023. The book was an expansion of his undergraduate honors thesis on the topic. He published and edited a revival of the publication as Newspaper Vol V between 2016 and 2017.
He was the research assistant for the Brooklyn Museum exhibition and publication Copy Machine Manifestos: Artists Who Make Zines.
Before his Ph.D., he completed a BA in Art History with high honors and minors in German and Medieval Studies at New York University in 2018.
He welcomes inquiries about archival consulting, technician, brokering work, as well as art history teaching opportunities, in both the United States and Puerto Rico. He has held positions at the Brooklyn Museum, the Fales Library, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and as a contracted researcher and archivist for artists such as Penny Arcade, AA Bronson, Danny Fields.
Email: mgabrielyanez@gmail.com
CV is available upon request.
some links:
Smithsonian American Art Museum Fellows Lecture on Alfred Leslie
Planetario on East Village Radio with DJ Tres Dos
John Heneghan’s Old Time Radio Show with Jerron Paxton and Will Stana
Conversation with Philip Aarons about Newspaper