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Pepón Osorio: Lehman Alumn, MacArthur Genius, Community Collaborator
Pepón Osorio at the 2017 Pennsylvania Governor’s Award for the Arts, Lancaster, PA.
October 21, 2025
When it comes to accumulating artifacts and experiences, artist and Lehman alumnus Pepón Osorio is a proponent of the "more is more" approach. This was the subject of an essay in Mousse Magazine, which included his Lehman education and how it—and his later work with New York City’s Department of Human Services—have deeply informed his creative practice. His art is rooted in community conversations, and uses common objects, photographs, and video to center local voices and everyday life in the barrio. This approach has shaped his best-known installations, “Scene of the Crime (Whose Crime?)” (1993), “No Crying Allowed in the Barbershop (En la barbería no se llora)” (1994), and “Badge of Honor” (1995), which evoke shared experiences while also challenging stereotypes about Nuyorican and Puerto Rican communities.
An interview with Natalia Ángeles Vieyra, curator of Latinx art at the National Gallery of Art, gave Osorio an opportunity to speak more about his education and how it opened a path to artmaking. In 2023, he was profiled in CUNY Laureates, a series about CUNY alumni who have won major awards in their fields.
(Cover photo: Governor Tom Wolf, CC-BY-2.0.)