"Thanks to the mentorship of Stephen Houston, under whose tutelage I received a strong training in the visual cultures of Mesoamerica, an art museum career was something I had considered throughout my graduate studies.

After receiving my doctorate in 2017, I was lucky to find a position advertised at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) as a Mellon Postdoctoral Curatorial Fellow in their Art of the Ancient Americas department. The goal of this fellowship is to train scholars with expertise in pre-Columbian art and archaeology how to translate their skills to curatorial work in an art museum setting. I jumped at the chance.

LACMA’s world-class collection of Mesoamerican—and, in particular, Maya—objects finds its home in the city with the largest urban Indigenous population in the United States. Many are migrants from their Indigenous homelands in Mexico and Guatemala. The position offered a unique opportunity to connect local communities with their cultural patrimony, something I consider to be a profound responsibility.

After four years as a fellow, I was promoted to Assistant Curator in September of 2022. I am privileged to be able to continue to do this work."