Marco Antonio Flores

Marco Antonio Flores is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Art and Art History at Stanford University, where he specializes in modern and contemporary art of the United States and Latin America. Moreover, he is interested in art’s connection to literature and poetry. His dissertation focuses on the photography and film of Laura Aguilar in relation to ideas of melancholia and depression. Flores studies how her photographs carry a source of emotional truth that articulates bereavement, empathy, and friendship.

Flores’s curatorial projects highlight art as an experiment, ephemeral and temporal archives, and visual activism. He has curated Imaginary Activism: The role of the artist beyond the art world at the University of California, Berkeley (2015); staring at the sun at the Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art (2019); and Me Llaman Calle: The Monumental Art of Juana Alicia at San Francisco Arts Commission Galleries (2023). He is currently organizing House of Valdez (2024), an exhibition in collaboration with the AltaMed Art Collection.

Flores received a B.A. and M.A. from the University of California, Berkeley, and a second M.A. from the Williams Graduate Program in the History of Art at the Clark Art Institute. He has held fellowships from the National Museum of the American Latino, Ford Foundation, Clark Art Institute, and Center for Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity at Stanford University. His research has been supported by grants from the Center for Race and Gender, Townsend Center for the Humanities, and Stanford Humanities Center.