MMARP Coordinator
HOME » ABOUT US » | English | Español
Mélida Buentello-Olivo
Mélida Buentello-Olivo is the Coordinator of the Moses Mesoamerican Archive and Research Project (MMARP) at Harvard University and serves as an Adjunct Professor of Art History at the University of the Incarnate Word in San Antonio, Texas. At MMARP she oversees the development and organization of the archive, the management of the project’s digital platform and website, archival digitization initiatives, and the coordination of research programs and public events related to the study of Mesoamerican cultures.
She holds a Master of Arts in Art History from the University of Texas at San Antonio and a Master of Liberal Arts in Museum Studies from Harvard University.
Her research interests include Mexican visual culture, iconography, and semiotics, with particular attention to visual archetypes and social types and the processes of cultural conditioning through which they become recognizable. She is interested in how images operate across visual, material, and multisensory forms of experience, and in the role of repetition and circulation in shaping collective identity, cultural memory, and nation-building. Her research has included studies of Mexican muralism, representations of women in nineteenth-century costumbrismo, and the popular prints of José Guadalupe Posada.
She has taught courses including Masterworks of Art, Art History II: From Renaissance to Modern, The Art of Mexico, Women in Art History, and Museum Studies.
Contact:
mbuentelloolivo@fas.harvard.edu