Overview
Leonardo specializes in Latin American art, specifically 19th-century Central American visual and material culture, with a focus on indigenous aesthetics and their representations. He is interested in analyzing the transformation of Central American visual culture during its transition from the colonial to the republican regime, and the socio-political uses of pre-Columbian art and contemporary indigenous material culture in that process.
Before coming to Cornell, Leonardo worked teaching at the University of Costa Rica. He has worked as a researcher for the Arts Research Institute (IIArte-UCR), the National Theater of Costa Rica and the Museum of Costa Rican Art (MAC). There he worked on projects related to collection management, curatorship and research in visual arts and architecture of the 19th and 20th centuries in Costa Rica and Central America.
He received a BA and a Licentiate degree in Art History from the University of Costa Rica. His book, Templo, palacio y centro social: la arquitectura y la ornamentación del Teatro Nacional de Costa Rica (Editorial Universidad de Costa Rica, forthcoming), analyzes from a sociocultural scope the architectural and decorative design of the National Theater of Costa Rica in relation to its iconographic, architectural and discursive antecedents, and in the Latin American context of the late 19th-century. He has presented his work at conferences such as the CIHA World Congress, the Central American Congress of History, and the Central American Congress of Cultural Studies.