Monica Bello (art historian)

Mónica Bello is a Spanish curator and art historian. She is a Fellow at the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce. In her curatorial work she discusses the way artists instigate new conversations around emergent culture and societal phenomena, such as the role of science and technology in the perception of reality. For more than 15 years she has been curating exhibitions and events internationally in collaboration with leading artists, designers, researchers and scientists of various disciplines.

Since 2015 she is the curator and head of arts at CERN[2] at the European Organization for Nuclear Research in Geneva, Switzerland. At CERN she curates the research-led artistic residencies and the new art commissions that reflect on the conversations and exchanges between artists and particle physicists and engineers as well as staff of the laboratory.

In 2018 she was invited as guest curator of the Audemars Piguet Art Commission for Art Basel 2018. In her curatorial role she selected a number of artists for the commission and curated the final exhibition launched during the art fair. Semiconductor, the artist duo based in Brighton, were the recipients of the commission. Their project HALO was selected and commissioned.

Prior to her arrival to Geneva she held the position of artistic director of VIDA (2010-2015) at Fundación Telefónica, Madrid (Spain), an award that aimed to foster cross-cultural expressions around the notion of life. She initiated and ran (2007-2010) the Department of Education at Laboral Centro de Arte, Gijón (Spain). In 2004 she co-initiated Capsula in collaboration with Finnish curator Ulla Taipale. Capsula is a curatorial platform with a focus in the topics of art, science and nature, with an initial focus in biological and ecological art related practices. In 2003 she was recipient of the Emergent Curators Award Inéditos at Casa Encendida Madrid. In her award-winning exhibition Organisms became one of the first exhibitions of bioart in Spain - with works as Meart The Semi-Living artist and Pig Wings by the Tissue Culture & Art Project.