Maiza Hixson

WORK HISTORY

EDUCATION

ABOUT MAIZA HIXSON

Maiza Hixson is a curator, artist, and Doctoral Candidate in the Department of Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies at University of California Santa Barbara. Hixson currently teaches Acting, U.S. Latino Theater, and Race and Ballet. In 2019, she team-taught an interdisciplinary art and neuroscience course, “Memory: An Interdisciplinary Exploration,” with UCSB Art Professor Kim Yasuda, Neuroscience Professor Ken Kosick, and visiting professor Cristina Pato—a musician with cellist Yo-Yo Ma’s “Silkroad Ensemble.” From 20••••19, she taught “Art & Visual Literacy” under Dr. Helen Taschian; performance and sculpture courses, including “The Intersections of Art and Life,” under Prof. Kip Fulbeck and “Introduction to Contemporary Practice II: Spatial Studies” under Prof. Jane Mulfinger. From 20••••13, she was Senior Lecturer at University of the Arts, Philadelphia, where she taught a graduate seminar on curatorial performance and socially engaged art. From 20••••12, she served as Adjunct Instructor for the Department of Art + Design, Art History, Art Education, Towson University, Baltimore, MD, where she taught undergraduate “Advanced Composition: Writing About Art”; and a graduate MFA Seminar on “Curatorial Performance as Socially Engaged Artistic Practice.” Hixson writes about the performative staging of urban space and analyzes how public art both participates in and often catalyzes resistance against branded narratives of cities and place. Her article “Transgressing Aesthetic Borders: Art, Sex & Marriage in Santa Barbara’s Courthouse Murals” was recently accepted for publication in Miscellanea: Anthropologica et Sociologica, University of Gdańsk. From 20••••17, she was Curator of Public Art for the Santa Barbara County Arts Commission and Co-Director of the Santa Barbara Center for Art, Science and Technology. She also served as Chief Curator of the Delaware Center for the Contemporary Arts from 20••••15. Hixson has exhibited art and performed widely at such venues as Eisenwunderwelt in Berlin; Little Tokyo Arts Complex in Los Angeles; the Art, Design and Architecture Museum in Santa Barbara; Highways in Santa Monica; Brooklyn Museum of Art in New York; Baltimore Contemporary; Soap Factory, Minneapolis; Portland Institute for Contemporary Art in Portland, Oregon; Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art in Winston-Salem, NC; Haverford College; and many others. Her curatorial work was featured on the EMMY Award-winning PBS TV show “Articulate” with Jim Cotter and her curatorial projects have been presented at galleries across the U.S.