Yasmin Ramirez is an art worker, curator, and writer based in New York City. She holds a Ph.D. in Art History from the Graduate Center, CUNY.  Born in Brooklyn, Ramirez was active in the downtown art scene of the early 1980s as a club kid and art critic for the East Village Eye. Attracted to street art and hip hop, she became acquainted with emerging artists and writers, many of whom are now icons of the 1980s. Currently an independent curator, Dr. Ramirez has collaborated on curatorial projects with The Bronx Museum, El Museo Del Barrio, The Loisaida Center, The New Museum, The Studio Museum in Harlem, Franklin Furnace, and Taller Boricua. Her critically acclaimed exhibitions and panels include: Pasado y Present: Art after the Young Lords, 1969-2019 (2019); Home, Memory, and Future (2016); Martin Wong: Human Instamatic (2015); ¡Presente!: The Young Lords in New York (2015); The Puerto Rican Art Workers and the Construction of the Nuyorican Art Movement (2014); Re-Membering Loisaida: On Archiving and the Lure of the Retro Lens (2009); “Esto A Veces Tiene Nombre": Latin@ Art Collectives in a Post-Movement Millennium (2008); The Boricua in Basquiat (2005); Voices From Our Communities:  Perspectives on a Decade of Collecting at El Museo del Barrio (2000); Pressing the Point: Parallel Expressions in the Graphic Arts of the Chicano and Puerto Rican Movements (1999). 

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Published essays include:

"Lorenzo Homar" (2019); "King of the Line: The Sovereign Acts of Jean Michel Basquiat" (2017); "Mi Querido Barrio: A Virtual Tour of East Harlem Through Time" (2016); "The Young Lords Way" (2015); "Snap Shots:  A Short History of the Association of Hispanic Arts" (2013); "The Creative Class of Color in New York" (2009); "The Activist Legacy of Puerto Rican Artists in New York and the Art Heritage of Puerto Rico" (2007); "Puerto Rican Light: To Allora and Calzadilla" (2006); "Nuyorican Visionary: Jorge Soto and the Evolution of an Afro-Taino Aesthetic at Taller Boricua" (2005); and "Parallel Lives, Striking Differences: Notes on Chicano and Puerto Rican Graphic Arts of the 1970s" (1999).

 

Dr. Ramirez is currently writing a book on art movements and collectives in East Harlem.