After receiving a PhD from the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, Barbara began her curatorial career at the Queens Museum of Art in New York City in 1986. Here she organized several exhibitions, including Classical Myth and Imagery in Contemporary Art and Fragile Ecologies: Contemporary Artists’ Interpretations and Solutions that toured the US with the Smithsonian Institution Traveling Exhibition Service. In 1996, she was appointed Curator of Exhibitions at the Ackland Art Museum, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where she organized more than twenty exhibitions.

As a curator at the Whatcom Museum for nearly ten years 2009-2018 she organized the international traveling exhibition, Vanishing Ice: Alpine and Polar Landscapes in Art 1775-2012 and Endangered Species: Artists on the Front Line of Biodiversity.

Most recently in 2023, Barbara curated the retrospective exhibition, Jyoti Duwadi, Himalaya to Cascadia: Transcending Boundaries” for Western Washington University’s Western Gallery. This was followed in 2024 with Jyoti Duwadi’s exhibition, Reimagining the Intersection of Art and Environment/Exploring Natural and Repurposed Materials at the Port Angeles Fine Art Center, Washington. 

In 2024, She began curating a series of exhibitions, Women Rising, in conjunction with the Cascadia International Women’s Film Festival in Bellingham, Washington.