Raino Isto is an art historian, educator, and curator whose work focuses on the intersection of art, justice, historical consciousness, and community memory. They are currently a visiting fellow at the Institute for Cultural Anthropology and Art Studies (IAKSA) in Tirana, Albania, and serve as editor-in-chief at ARTMargins Online.

Raino received their PhD from the University of Maryland, College Park, where their dissertation focused on the development of monumental sculpture in postwar Southeastern Europe, and the continuing resonance of socialist monumentality evident in the work of contemporary artists responding to the recent past. From 2016 to 2018, Raino was coordinator and curator at the Stamp Gallery, University of Maryland’s premier contemporary art space. Raino’s research has been supported by the Getty Research Foundation, ACLS, and American Councils for International Education.

Their work has been published in the Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art; Third Text; Science Fiction Studies; Extrapolation; the International Journal for History, Culture, and Modernity; International Labor and Working-Class History;RACAR; ARTMargins; and The Getty Research Journal. 

They are currently at work on a book about realism, antifascism, and the global Cold War in postwar Albania.