Marisa Lerer
Director of Education

Marisa has worked in higher education, curriculum development, and contemporary art for over 15 years. As an art historian, Marisa specializes in Latin American and Latine art, public art, and memorials. Her publications have focused on art under dictatorship in Latin America, memorials dedicated to victims of state-sponsored terrorism in Argentina and Chile, contested monuments, and Latine public sculpture.

She was the George Gurney Senior Fellow at the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Calvin B. Grimes Scholar-in-Residence at New York University, and was awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities Grant for her current book project on Latine public memorials. She has also been honored with grants and fellowships from Fulbright, New York University/Le Centre national de la recherche scientifique, and CUNY’s Center for Place Culture and Politics, among others.

Prior to joining Creative Capital, she was Associate Professor of modern and contemporary art history and chair of the Art History & Digital Media Art Department at Manhattan College, Assistant Professor of contemporary art at the University of Denver, and has served on the faculty at Christie’s Education, Parsons School of Design, and the Smithsonian Latino Museum Studies Program.

Marisa was co-editor of the journal Public Art Dialogue, which functions as a forum for critical discourse and commentary about the practice of public art and now serves on the journal’s editorial board. She received her Ph.D. at the Graduate Center, City University of New York and her M.A. and B.A. from UCLA and NYU, respectively.