Virginia M. Fields, senior LACMA curator, dies at 58

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Virginia M. Fields, a senior curator at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, died Wednesday night at age 58, a spokeswoman for the museum said. Fields, who joined LACMA in 1989, was a scholar in early Mesoamerican art and archaeology, and worked in the museum’s Art of the Ancient Americas department.

LACMA did not give the cause of Fields’ death. During her years at LACMA, she co-curated the exhibitions ‘Painting the Maya Universe: Royal Ceramics of the Classic Period’ (1994-95); ‘The Road to Aztlan: Art from a Mythic Homeland’ (2001); and ‘Lords of Creation: The Origins of Sacred Maya Kingship’ (2005-06).

Fields also worked on the upcoming exhibition ‘Children of the Plumed Serpent: The Legacy of Quetzalcoatl in Ancient Mexico,’ which is scheduled to open in April 2012 at LACMA.

Before coming to LACMA, Fields served as curator of the Native American collection at the Clarke Memorial Museum in Eureka, Calif., and taught pre-Columbian and Native American art history at UC Santa Barbara, UCLA, Humboldt State University and Cal State Northridge.

Fields held a doctoral degree in Latin American Studies from the University of Texas at Austin.

A complete obituary will follow at latimes.com/obits.

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-- David Ng