Cuauhtémoc Medina will receive a $15,000 stipend for winning, and join a list of former Hopps winners that includes Eungie Joo, Maria Lind and Adam Szymczyk.

Cuauhtémoc Medina served as the inaugural associate curator of Tate Modern’s Latin American art collections from 2002 to 2008, and has curated and published widely. He also has a habit of giving his shows really great names, like “20 Million Mexicans Can’t Be Wrong,” shown at the South London Gallery in 2002, and “Cannibal Dominoes,” at the Contemporary Art Project in Murcia, Spain, in 2010.

The award, which has been given to an early to mid-career curator every two years since 2001, is named for trailblazing contemporary art curator Walter Hopps, who cofounded the Ferus Gallery in Los Angeles in 1957 and ran the Pasadena Museum of Art (now the Norton Simon), which gave important shows to Warhol, Duchamp and others during his tenure.

The jury for the prize was comprised of Russell Ferguson, the chair of UCLA’s department of art, Whitney curator Elisabeth Sussman and independent curator Ulrich Loock.