Malia Helfmeyer

Malia Rose Helfmeyer lives in the land of the Oaks and hails from the land o’ the peaches and pines (Athens, Georgia). She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology and Anthropology from Lewis and Clark College. She developed her interest in visual culture during the interim years between undergraduate and  graduate school, during which she worked as a curator and arts advocate at the Daybreak Star Native American Cultural Center in Seattle, WA. Whilst in Seattle, she would often sneak into art history lectures on the University of Washington campus, and was a regular attendee at the Seattle Art Museum’s artist lecture series. Because of the autodidactic nature of her foundational visual culture knowledge, Malia is especially motivated to pursue a career in public programming at cultural institutions, and she currently holds an internship in the public programs department at SFMOMA. Malia has also held positions at Root Division and Intersection for the Arts, two non-profit arts organizations in San Francisco. She is now in her final year of VCS, and is attending to her interests in local histories by writing her thesis on spatial politics at the juncture of urban and aesthetic discourses in the gentrification of San Francisco’s South of Market Area. Malia would be happy to have a conversation about her experience at CCA, and can be reached at mhelfmeyer@cca.edu.