Taína Caragol also known as Taína Beatriz Caragol-Barreto, is a Puerto Rican art historian, curator, and author.^[1] She currently serves as the curator for Latino Art and History at the National Portrait Gallery, since 2013.^[1][2] She previously held positions at Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) and at the Museo de Arte de Ponce.

Caragol has a BA degree in modern languages from the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras and a MA degree in French studies from Middlebury College.^[3] She has a PhD in 2013 in art history from the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.^[3][4] Her dissertation was titled, “Boom and Dust: The Rise of Latin American and Latino Art in New York Exhibition Venues and Auction Houses, 1970s–1980s”.^[3]

Since 2013, she has curator for Latino Art and History at the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, D.C.^[2][3] Caragol was hired in part to diversify the museum collection holdings, and to promote diversity in museum representation and American identity in exhibitions.^[5] At the time of hire, the National Portrait Gallery had a 22,000-piece collection and held less than 1% Latino, 5% Black, and less than 25% female portraits.^[5] In the first 5 years at the role, she grew the Latin representation to 2.5%, mostly with around 150 new works by Latino artists.^[5]

She previously held a position as the Latin American bibliographer for the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York City, from 2004 to 2007; and as curator of education at the Museo de Arte de Ponce in Ponce, Puerto Rico in 2010.^[1][3][4]

• Women in the art history field

A list of select publications by Caragol:

• Caragol, Taína; Moss, Dorothy; Powell, Richard; Sajet, Kim (2020). "Unveiling the Unconventional, Kehinde Wiley's Portrait of Barack Obama". The Obama Portraits. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. ISBN 9780691203294.
• Caragol, Taína (2006). Archival Collections Guide: Survey of Archives of Latino and Latin American Art. Museum of Modern Art. New York City, New York: Museum of Modern Art Library.
• Caragol, Taína B. (Fall 2005). "Archives of Reality, Contemporary Efforts to Document Latino Art". American Art. 19 (3). Smithsonian American Art Museum. doi:10.1086/500224. S2CID 191217868.

• Podcast: Focusing on Ruben Salazar, with Taína Caragol, National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution