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| Laura Marigo | |
|---|---|
| Name | Laura Marigo |
| Birth date | 1976 |
| Birth place | Florence, Italy |
| Occupation | Curator; Art historian; Photographer |
| Alma mater | University of Florence; Yale University; Courtauld Institute of Art |
| Notable works | "Cartographies of Light"; "Archive of Voices" |
Laura Marigo is an Italian-born art historian, curator, and visual artist known for interdisciplinary projects that bridge contemporary art, archival studies, and photographic practice. Her career spans curatorial roles at leading museums, collaborative research with academic institutions, and international exhibitions that engage with memory, landscape, and postcolonial histories. Marigo's work convenes artists, archivists, and scholars to interrogate visual archives and the politics of representation.
Marigo was born in Florence and raised amid the cultural institutions of Florence, near collections associated with Uffizi Gallery, Palazzo Pitti, and the Bargello. She completed undergraduate studies at the University of Florence with a focus on modern and contemporary art history and attended a postgraduate program at the Courtauld Institute of Art in London, where she engaged with curatorial theory and museology. Marigo later undertook doctoral research at Yale University concentrating on photographic archives, visual culture, and the relationship between European collections and former Italian colonial territories. During her formative years she participated in workshops at the Smithsonian Institution and fellowships at the Getty Research Institute.
Marigo began her professional career as an assistant curator at the Palazzo Strozzi before moving to positions at the Tate Modern and the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía. She has held visiting curator roles at the Museum of Modern Art and the Victoria and Albert Museum and served as a research curator for exhibition projects at the Fondazione Prada and the MAXXI National Museum of 21st Century Arts. Her institutional collaborations include long-term partnerships with academic centers such as the Warburg Institute and the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London. Marigo has also been a guest lecturer at Columbia University, Harvard University, and the Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa, delivering seminars on photographic archives and transnational curatorial practice.
Marigo's research examines photographic archives, visual historiography, and the entanglement of European collections with colonial-era materials. She has investigated collections at the Biblioteca Nazionale Centrale di Firenze, the Archivio Centrale dello Stato, and the British Library to trace networks of image circulation between Italy, Ethiopia, Libya, and the Horn of Africa. Her projects engage with critical theory from scholars associated with the School of Paris, postcolonial studies linked to Edward Said, and contemporary art discourse shaped by figures from the Black Arts Movement and Arte Povera. Marigo has contributed methodological innovations in archival curation, proposing practices that foreground provenance, indigenous epistemologies, and collaborative restitution dialogues involving institutions like the International Council of Museums and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization.
She has led interdisciplinary teams combining conservators from the Getty Conservation Institute, historians from the European University Institute, and anthropologists affiliated with the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology. Her supervised projects have mapped photographic ephemera across repositories such as the Bibliothèque nationale de France, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the National Archives (UK), fostering networks for digitization, metadata harmonization, and multilingual cataloguing.
Marigo has authored essays and catalogue texts in major exhibition catalogues for shows at Tate Britain, Centre Pompidou, and the Museo Reina Sofía. Key curated exhibitions include "Cartographies of Light" at the Galleria Nazionale d'Arte Moderna and "Archive of Voices" at the Hayward Gallery, each accompanied by edited volumes featuring contributions from scholars at Yale University Press, MIT Press, and Routledge. Her writings appear in journals such as October (journal), Artforum, and Third Text, and she has contributed chapters to edited collections published by the Princeton University Press and the Bloomsbury Academic list.
Marigo has collaborated with artists represented by galleries including Gagosian Gallery, Hauser & Wirth, and Whitechapel Gallery, curating international exhibitions at festivals such as the Venice Biennale and the Sharjah Biennial. She has also organized symposiums at the Courtauld Institute and the Serpentine Galleries, producing catalogues and digital resources used by researchers and students.
Marigo's work has been recognized with fellowships and awards from institutions including the Getty Foundation, the Leverhulme Trust, and the European Research Council. She received a curatorial prize from the International Federation of Arts Councils and Culture Agencies and was shortlisted for the Hirshhorn National Medal in contemporary curatorship. Marigo has held distinguished fellowships at the Stanford Humanities Center and the Villa I Tatti, Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies, and her projects have been funded by grants from the Arts Council England and the Fondazione Cariplo.
Marigo divides her time between research residencies in Florence and curatorial practice in London and New York City. Her legacy includes the development of collaborative archival methodologies now adopted by curators at the Smithsonian Institution and the National Gallery of Art, and an influence on next-generation curators trained through programs at the Courtauld Institute and Columbia University. Colleagues and institutions cite her contributions to ethical provenance research, transnational exhibition-making, and the integration of community-based practices into major museums. Marigo continues to mentor emerging curators and to advise international repatriation and digitization initiatives.
Category:Italian art historians Category:Italian curators Category:Women curators