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Karin Higa, longtime L.A. art curator, dies at 47

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Karin Higa, a specialist in Asian American art who worked for nearly a decade and a half as a curator at the Japanese American National Museum in Los Angeles, has died at 47.

Higa died on Tuesday at her home in L.A. following a battle with cancer, said Russell Ferguson, her husband.

Ferguson, who is a professor in the art department at UCLA, said that his wife had been diagnosed with cancer in February.

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Higa worked as a curator at the Japanese American National Museum from 1992 to 2006, rising to the rank of senior curator of art. She had recently been named a curator for the Hammer Museum’s “Made in L.A.” Biennial for 2014 but was forced to step down due to her illness.

PHOTOS: Arts and culture in pictures by The Times

During her tenure at the Japanese American National Museum, Higa helped to organize many notable exhibitions, including a 1992 show of art made at internment camps during World War II and a 2008 show devoted to the art of ikebana, or Japanese flower arrangement.

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She was a curator of the touring exhibition “One Way or Another,” spotlighting contemporary Asian American art, which ran at the Asia Society in New York in 2006.

Higa was a L.A. native who spent most of her career in Southern California. She graduated from Columbia University in New York and received a master’s degree in art history from UCLA.

Ferguson said that she was currently enrolled in the doctoral art history program at USC but had not completed the program.

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In addition to her husband, Higa’s survivors include her mother and a brother.

[For the Record, 2:01 p.m. Oct. 30: An earlier version of this article incorrectly credited the Hammer Museum for the photograph of Karin Higa. It was taken by Sharon Lockhart.]

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