Xiaoxiao Bao is a Ph.D. candidate in Arts Administration, Education and Policy at The Ohio State University. Drawing from her cross-cultural educational background and professional experiences in non-profit art organizations and museums, her research focuses on socially engaged art, culturally relevant pedagogy, and community-based art education. Her dissertation project that examines narratives of socially engaged art in San Francisco’s Chinatown has received the 2023 Graduate Research Award at the Art Education Research Institute (AERI) Symposium. 

Xiaoxiao holds an M.A. in Art Education from OSU and a B.A. in Art History from the University of California, Berkeley. As the first Graduate Student Representative for the Asian Art and Culture Interest Group at the National Art Education Association (NAEA), she advocates for student-faculty collaboration in multicultural curriculum development and designs mentorship programs that foster community among student members at institutions nationwide. Currently, she co-leads a Wallace Foundation-funded research project investigating how community-based art organizations weather disruptive events and chronic crises in building resilience and impact lasting structural changes. 

Xiaoxiao will be recognized and present on her research at the 2025 Barkan and Marantz Award Ceremony on April 18, 2025. The Manuel Barkan Dissertation Fellowship was established in 1995 in the name of the first chair of the department by his wife, Toby Barkan Willits. This competitive award supports the academic and living expenses of a doctoral candidate in Art Education who is completing his/her dissertation.

Dissertation: Into the Streets: Walking Narratives of Art and Communities in San Francisco’s Chinatown

Abstract
Despite its rich cultural heritage as one of the oldest and largest Chinatowns in the United States, San Francisco’s Chinatown has long been misrepresented in literature and media as an exotic enclave, a tourist spectacle, or a monolithic community defined by poverty and cultural homogeneity—portrayals that overlook its diverse and evolving lived experiences. This research shifts such focus to the daily life of the artist-in-residence program at 41 Ross, a community-embedded studio space in a historic alleyway of San Francisco’s Chinatown, to examine how socially engaged art programs uncover personal and collective narratives tied to people and place.

Through narrative inquiry, this study draws on two rounds of fieldwork, participant observation, walking interviews, and archival research to gather data that complicate and challenge stereotypes of Chinatown communities. Artists undertaking residencies have transformed the studio space into a dynamic and adaptable site for community-informed expression. Additionally, set against the backdrop of the COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent surge in anti-Asian discrimination, the study also documents how artistic initiatives at 41 Ross have served as catalysts for education, healing, and resilience amid systemic oppression and exclusion.