Pedro Alonzo
Lecturer in Architecture
Pedro Alonzo is a Boston-based independent curator and art advisor. Alonzo has advised distinguished collections in Mexico, the United States and Europe. He was formerly an adjunct curator at Dallas Contemporary (2012-2023), the ICA Boston (2011-2013) and the Institute of Visual Arts (INOVA), University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee (1996-2002). In 2017 he formalized his practice by establishing A&C.
Since 2006 Pedro has specialized in producing exhibitions that transcend the boundaries of the museum walls and spill out onto the urban landscape, addressing audiences beyond the traditional museum public. At the ICA Boston, he curated Shepard Fairey’s 20-year survey titled, Supply and Demand, and ten years later he curated Shepard Fairey’s Facing the Giant: Three Decades of Dissent in multiple venues. He also collaborated with the ICA Boston for a solo exhibition with Dr. Lakra, and a site-specific installation by SWOON and OSGEMEOS, which resulted in the first mural on the Rose Kennedy Greenway. For the MCA San Diego, he organized the group exhibition Viva la Revolución: A Dialogue with the Urban Landscape, which featured site-specific works inside the museum and throughout downtown San Diego. In 2013 he organized the first solo museum exhibition for the French artist JR, winner of the 2010 Ted Prize, at the Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati.
In 2015, Alonzo developed a public art program for the John Hancock Tower in Boston, featuring a mural by MOMO, a steel hammock sculpture by Ernesto Neto, and a 96 x 150 foot pasting on the building by JR. The same year he curated a citywide exhibition titled Open Source: Engaging Audiences in Public Space for the Philadelphia Mural Arts Program that included ambitious public works by artists Sam Durant, Jonathan Monk, Odili Odita, Michelle Angela-Ortiz, Shinique Smith and Swoon. In 2016 Alonzo began working with The Trustees, Massachusetts’ largest conservation and preservation nonprofit, to launch and curate the organization’s first Art and the Landscape Initiative, resulting in four site-specific projects created for some of its most iconic sites: Sam Durant at the historic Old Manse in Concord, Jeppe Hein at the scenic Worlds End in Hingham, Alicja Kwade at the Crane Estate in Ipswich, and Doug Aitken who created a reflective hot air balloon sculpture that traveled to multiple locations across Massachusetts. In 2017, Alonzo worked with JR to place a gigantic image of a Mexican child named Kikito, overlooking the US/México border wall in Tecate. As an Adjunct Curator at Dallas Contemporary Alonzo curated Adriana Varejão: Kindred Spirits in 2015, Moving in Glances by Alicja Kwade in 2019, Directional Energies by Jose Dávila in 2020, a major exhibition by Japanese artist Yoshitomo Nara in 2021 and in 2022 Shepard Fairey, Backward Forward, among others. For Library Street Collective he curated Sam Durant’s exhibition Iconoclasm. The project consisted of two parts: an exhibition of drawings that was complimented by the placement of a selection of the drawings in key exterior locations throughout Metro Detroit. In 2019, Pedro Alonzo worked with Now + There as guest curator for Oscar Tuazon’s Growth Rings for Central Wharf Park in Boston. Followed by Jose Dávila’s To Each Era Its Art. To Art, Its Freedom. in 2020, Claudia Comte’s Five Marble Leaves in 2022, and Graft by Edra Soto in 2023. Additionally, in 2019, he established an artistic dialogue between Julio Le Parc and OSGEMEOS, through an exhibition at Carpinteria in Rio de Janeiro. In 2022 he developed Amnesia Atómica, an ongoing project by Pedro Reyes, commissioned by The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, centered to revive and reintroduce the issue of nuclear threat into the public narrative. His most recent exhibitions are Urban (R )evolution, in Cordoaria Nacional in Lisbon, which highlights the evolution of urban art from graffiti to street art and the Noor Riyadh Festival, the world’s largest exhibition of light art which featured over eighty large scale works of public art placed throughout Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.
Alonzo has organized exhibitions in public museums and private collections internationally, including:
- Estación Tijuana, Tijuana, Mexico
- Museo Rufino Tamayo, Mexico City, Mexico
- Baltic Centre for Contemporary Art, Newcastle, England
- Pinchuk Art Centre, Kiev, Ukraine
- Van Moerkerke Collection, Oostende, Belgium
- Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA), Boston
- Museum of Contemporary Art (MCA), San Diego
- Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Monterrey (MARCO), Mexico
- Museo Amparo, Puebla, Mexico
- Museo de la Ciudad de México, Mexico City
- Museo de Arte Contemporáneo de Oaxaca (MACO), Mexico
- Contemporary Arts Center, Cincinnati
- Dallas Contemporary, Dallas
- Library Street Collective, Detroit
- School of the Art Institute of Chicago
- Carpinteria, Rio de Janeiro
- Cordoaria Nacional, Lisbon
Alonzo has written extensively, including interviews with artists such as SWOON, Mark Ryden, William Cordova and OSGEMEOS, published in the book, The Upset: Young Contemporary Art, and an essay on Keith Haring for the exhibition catalog, Keith Haring 1978-1982. In addition, he edited and contributed an essay to, Art and Agenda: Political Art and Activism. In 2017 he contributed essays to Sam Durant’s Build Therefore Your Own World, Jonathan Monk’s Restaurant Drawings and Intersecting Practices an essay which contrasted the work of Jose Davila and Alicja Kwade for the Berlin based Konig magazine. Most recently his essays were published in the monographs, Swoon: the Red Skein, Jose Davila, and Tavares Strachan: The Awakening.
Alonzo is a seasoned public speaker, he has lectured at the Graduate School of Design, Harvard University; School of the Art Institute if Chicago; Poptech, Camden, Maine; Catalyst Conversations, Broad Institute of MIT and Harvard; World Frontier Forum, Berlin. His conversations with artists include Adriana Varejao: Talavera, Gagosian Gallery; Jose Davila: The Circularity of Desire; Doug Aitken: New Horizon, Dallas Contemporary; Patrick Martinez: Los Angeles Resilience, BMW; Shepard Fairey, Art Basel Miami Beach and JR, Dallas Contemporary.