Susana Smith Bautista Author

Susana Smith Bautista is a museum professional and art historian with almost 30 years of providing leadership and strategic guidance to museums and cultural institutions, and an art curator and critic of Latinx/Chicanx and Latin American art, having worked in Greece, New York, and Los Angeles. She served as executive director of the Mexican Cultural Institute of Los Angeles and as interim deputy director and then director of public engagement at the USC Pacific Asia Museum. She was executive director of the Pasadena Museum of California Art when it closed permanently October 2018.

Bautista received a Ph.D. in communication from the University of Southern California and a Master’s degree in art history/museum studies also from USC, graduating Phi Kappa Phi.

She has also taught at USC Annenberg School of Communication and at Claremont Graduate University’s Arts Management Program. In March 2020 she participated in a panel discussion at the California Association of Museums on Stories of Museum Transformation and Failure, sharing the closure story of the Pasadena Museum of California Art.