Huffman received an MFA in Exhibition Design (with distinction) from the School of Fine Art, California State University Long Beach (CSULB) in 1979 under the supervision of Stacy Dukes, with a second major in Radio/Film/Television.
As an art student in the 1970s, Huffman supported herself with a part-time job as 'staff artist' for the Long Beach Public Library system - one of the first institutions to acquire portable video equipment.
Under her direction, she established LBMA Video as a regional media art center, with fundraising for a multimedia workshop and broadcast quality post-production facility for artists at a former (and unused) police precinct in Belmont Shore (a hip, young Long Beach community).
Huffman curated and produced several media art installations in the LBMA, for example by Gary Hill, Bill Viola, Eleanor Antin, Dara Birnbaum, Laurie Anderson, Ant Farm, Nan Hoover.
Huffman was event coordinator for the regional Los Angeles county initiative to celebrate the 10 year anniversary of WOMANHOUSE (since 1972) and the founding of the Southern California feminist movement.
[9] Executive producer of the Long Beach Museum of Art's cable television series, including interviews, artists videotapes, and special projects.
Artists commissioned for 'The CAT Fund' included (among others): Laurie Anderson, Bill Viola, Tony Oursler, Constance de Jong, Joan Jonas, Dara Birnbaum, Raul Ruiz, Marcel Odenbach, Bill Seaman, Daniel Reeves, Ken Fiengold, Chip Lord, Doug Hall, Ilene Segalove, William Wegman and Michael Smith.
[13] [14] Huffman was series initiator and US producer of the international television magazine TIME CODE, a non-verbal artists collaboration, co-produced with Channel 4 (UK), RTBF (Belgium), NOS (Netherlands), TVE (Spain) and ZDF (Germany).
[15] Boston Residency for Van Gogh TV and tour coordinator for VGTV presentations in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, Vancouver, Philadelphia, Omaha, and New York City.
The SCCA's energy was directed towards building skills, technical connectivity, and self-confidence to work collaboratively with other East European centers, as well as with Western media organizations and individuals.
Curator and co-organizer with Thomas Brandstetter of a monthly multi-media theme event series at the HILUS office, to promote archive use, and the info-associations between video, various print media, CD ROMS, and internet resources.
[28] [29] Huffman was event coordinator and team journalist for a one-week experimental online newsroom, to report on the European Media Art Festival EMAF in Osnabruck, Germany, September 1996.
Curator of 10 internet and 10 CD ROM projects included in the international exhibition at Marieninstitut, part of steirischer herbst arts festival, Graz, Austria, October 1997.
[37] The website was featured in numerous festivals and exhibitions, and a text by Paoli Bianchi was included in the Kunstforum International special issue II of the Art of Travel, Spring 1997.
[39] 1996-1997, Huffman was co-author with Margarete Jahrmann (a multimedia artist from Vienna) of a regular column for the Telepolis Magazine of Net Culture, sponsored by Heise Verlag, Hannover, the largest German language publisher of technical journals (IX, CT).
Interactive & Online Art / TV History, guest lecture for professors Joachim Blank and Paul Sermon, Hochschule für Grafik und Buchkunst (HGB), Leipzig, Germany, May 1996.
Women Myth and Sexuality: a female history of video art, guest professor, semester course at Akademie der Bildenden Künste, Wien, Vienna, October 1996 - January 1997.
American Video Art Strategies, a weekend workshop at the Freie Klasse, Hochschule für Angewandte Kunst, Wien, Vienna, Austria, February 1997.
Cyber Intimacy: Strategies, Tactics and Communication Practices lecture and workshop at Hochschule für Bildende Künste, Braunschweig, Germany, for Professor Birgit Hein (filmmaker), June 1997.
She directed the regional artist-led media centre, the annual ROOT (Running Out Of Time) sound and performance art festival, artists commissions, collaborative productions and touring.
(works by five female Indian artists for the Asian Triennial Manchester 08) and Broadcast Yourself (co-curated with Sarah Cook for the AV Festival Newcastle) in 2008; Outside the Box and Central Asian Project (with Julia Sorokina and Anna Harding) in 2007; Nick Crowe: Commemorative Glass in 2006; Marcel Odenbach: The Idea of Africa and Eva Wohlgemuth’s Bodyscan: Instandstillness in 2005; Zineb Sedira: Telling stories with differences (2004); and Grace Weir: A Fine Line (2003), Lab3D: The Dimensionalised Internet, Balkan Matrix and Where do we go from here?.
The screening included works by Ante Bozanich, Nancy Buchanan, Chris Burden, John Duncan, Doug Hall, Ilene Segalove, Mitchell Syrop, Bruce and Norman Yonemoto, and others.
The exhibition Transitland: Video Art from Central and Eastern Europe 1980-2009 at InterSpace, in partnership with Transmediale, Berlin, and ACAX, Ludwig Museum, Budapest, was a collaborative archiving project.
[60] Huffman curated this exhibition of 42 artists who have studied with Professor Günther Selichar in his class mass media research und Kunst im medialen öffentlichen Raum at the Academy of Visual Arts Leipzig, Germany.
Face Settings: an International Co-cooking and Communication Project by Eva Wohlgemuth and Kathy Rae Huffman in Women, Art and Technology, edited by Judy Malloy, Cambridge MA, The MIT Press, 2003.
Sex, History and (sub) Culture: a reconsideration, essay on the work of Marina Grzinic and Aina Smid, for the Art*Int*Act journal and CD ROM publication, edited by Astrid Sommer, ZKM, Karlsruhe, 1997.
Pop~TARTS (1996-1997), a regular column for the Telepolis Magazine of Net Culture, sponsored by Heise Verlag, Hannover, the largest German language publisher of technical journals (IX, CT).
The Cold War - (TV) Lessons from the Past for the Future, for Checkpoint 95, in Wired World, Ars Electronica festival catalogue, Springer Verlag, Vienna, 1995.
Kunst aus dem Computer, Photo/cover story on the exhibition ITERATIONS at International Center of Photography, New York City, for ‚Screen Multimedia‘, MACup Verlag, Hamburg, 1994.
The Arts for Television, co-editor with Dorine Mignot and Julie Lazar, exhibition catalogue, MOCA, Stedelijk Museum, 1987, and author of the text 'Seeing is Believing'.