Eric Mazariegos Jr.

Eric is a scholar and researcher of the arts and architecture of the ancient and Indigenous Americas, focusing on the Intermediate or Isthmo-Colombian Area (the ancient Greater Caribbean, Costa Rica, Panamá, and Colombia). His theoretical interests lie in ecological and new materialist approaches, technical art history, non-human ontologies, the built and natural environment, phenomenology, and visuality. He is writing a dissertation on metal, ceramic, shell, and earth art created by once-known Tairona artists and architects, who inhabited the northern coast of what is today Colombia. His research also spans the modern and contemporary reception of Pre-Columbian art.

Most recently, Eric co-organized the symposium “Making Space, Making Place: Marking the Americas,” with the Institute for Studies on Latin American Art (ISLAA), the Institute of Fine Arts at NYU, and Columbia University. In 2022, he was a fellow in the Summer Institute for Technical Studies in Art at the Harvard Art Museums. In 2021, for his interest in Latinx muralism, photography, and performance, he was given Honorable Mention from the Ford Foundation Pre-Doctoral Fellowship. Having taught art history for several years, he received an EdX Certification from Columbia’s Center for Teaching and Learning. In 2024, he will be a contributor to the exhibition and catalogue for “El Dorado,” slated to open at the Americas Society, New York.

Eric graduated with a BA in art history and Spanish from UCLA in 2019 (magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa), where he was a Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellow and University of California Regents Scholar. He joined Columbia’s art history program in the fall of 2019.