Maria is a Leader, Artist, Experience Designer, and Educator interested in examining and amplifying the relationship between public and institution, public and private. Her projects span formal exhibitions to short-term interventions, involving collaborations with other artists, communities, and staff. Her projects include the edges of way-finding at the Hammer Museum, Fluxus and the public at the Walker Art Center, an interactive street-front exhibition at the Sainsbury Wellcome Centre in London and installations in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Maria is a frequent panelist on the subject of experimental museum projects and innovative exhibition design practices. She has twice served as a panelist on the Innovation Lab at the Center for the Future of Museums, AAM Program Review Panel and as a Program Advisor for the Presidio Parklands projects and the Institute at the Golden Gate. Prior to museums, she had a career in Interaction Design working with Xerox PARC, Salon.com, Speck Design, among others. Maria is an adjunct professor in the graduate design program at California College of the Arts. She holds a BFA in Studio Art from the University of Colorado, and an MFA in Design from Stanford University.
Maria is… Smart. Creative. Genuinely invested in using design to elevate diverse voices. Brilliant aesthetic and community designer–making beauty and community complementary, additive creatures instead of elements to be balanced and tamed. Someone who listens well enough to deliver what you actually want, even if you don’t know how to express it. And a kind, funny, delightful person to work with. – Nina Simon, Executive Director, Santa Cruz Museum of Art & History
We hired Maria as a contractor to work on the visual design and interaction design for a high-profile research project. Maria was a delight to work with. Even though she was a contractor, we all soon regarded her as a member of the team. Her designs were clean, attractive, and creative; I still find myself going back to them for ideas. She always had a positive can-do attitude. I would love to work with Maria again in the future. It would be hard to imagine a more capable, personable, and productive designer. – Eric Bier, Principal Scientist at PARC