She was the daughter of Elmer Hixson (an electrical engineering professor at the University of Texas).
She was an educator, historian, curator, and critic who lived her entire professional life in Chicago.
[1] Hixson attended Carlton College in Minnesota intent on majoring in Music and studying the harpsichord, but she switched to art and earned a BA in 1977.
Her doctoral dissertation was titled Body/Image: Presentation and Representation of the Figure through 1970s: Bruce Nauman, Rebecca Horn, Richard Prince, Martin Kippenberger.
Hixson co-organized many insightful and provocative exhibitions, including Youth Culture Killed My Dog (but I don't really mind),[4] Interchange (2007) at the Creative Research Laboratory at the University of Texas (2007),[5] and Killing Time, (2010).