Tanya Meléndez-Escalante
Board Member
Tanya Meléndez-Escalante is senior curator of education and public programs at The Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology (MFIT). At MFIT, Meléndez-Escalante has organized over 250 programs with designers, scholars, and members of the fashion industry. Speakers include Maria Grazia Chiuri, Thom Browne, Eva Chen, and Tim Gunn, among others. She holds an MA in Museum Studies: Costume and Textiles from the Fashion Institute of Technology (2004, New York) and a BA in Humanities from the Universidad de las Américas - Puebla (2000, México). For over 20 years, she has created projects that provide diverse perspectives on fashion, design, and art. Her research focuses on Mexican fashion.
Prior to moving to the United States, Meléndez-Escalante worked at the British Council Mexico as arts manager, and at Centro de Diseño, Cine y Televisión, both in Mexico City. She was a Fulbright scholar from 2002-2004 and the Kell-Muñoz fellow at the Cooper Hewitt Museum in 2003-2004. Her BA thesis was awarded best in museum studies in Mexico by the National Institute of Anthropology and History (INAH) in 2000, and she was named best MA student by the Dean of Graduate studies at FIT in 2004.
Her publications include: Latin American and Latinx Fashion Design Today - ¡Moda Hoy! (Bloomsbury, 2024), Moda y Política (Taller FDP/Border, 2015), and Cross-Pollination: Masterpieces of the Collections (MFIT/Atelier Romo, 2013); and was contributing author in Food & Fashion (Bloomsbury, 2023), Blancopop : Una Mirada al Estilismo de Moda en México (Blancopop, 2022), Exhibitionism: 50 Years of The Museum at FIT (Skira, 2019), Pink: The History of a Punk, Pretty, Powerful Color (Thames & Hudson, 2018), and La comedia y el melodrama en el audiovisual iberoamericano contemporáneo (Iberoamericana Editorial Vervuert, 2015).
Meléndez-Escalante has curated “Eterno Femenino” (2017) as part of the International Contemporary Art Festival in León, “Julia y Renata: Moda y Transformación” (2020) at the Museo de Arte de Zapopan, both in Mexico, and “¡Moda Hoy! Latin American Fashion” (2022) at MFIT.