Selma Holo is the Executive Director of USC Museums (University of Southern California). Currently, that includes the USC Fisher Museum of Art, the USC Pacific Asia Museum and the Hancock Memorial Museum. She is also a tenured professor of art history and Director of the International Museum Institute at USC. Her first two books studied the relationship between art museums and developing democracies in Spain and Mexico. These are Beyond the Prado: Museums and Identity in Democratic Spain and Oaxaca at the Crossroads: Managing Memory, Negotiating Change, both published by the Smithsonian Press and translated into Spanish. Beyond the Turnstile: Making the Case for Museums and Sustainable Values and Re-Mix: Changing Conversations in Museums of the Americas, with the assistance of Mari-Tere Alvarez, argue for the establishment of a series of qualitative values to analyze the success of museums about the tyranny of “the door”, as well as a life cycle theory that allows them to be analyzed through a panarchic lens. Both books have become important manuals for strategic planning in all types of museums across the museum spectrum.

The Holo Museum Studies program at USC was a graduate program granting a double master's degree in art history and museum studies. A large percentage of its graduates decided to undertake a doctorate. Holo's success in placing these graduates was notable, with almost 100% of them entering museums or related institutions such as foundations, auction houses, and university positions.

The USC Fisher Museum that Holo has directed since 1981 has a collection of 3,000 pieces and has focused for the past 25 years on exhibitions of Latin America, Spain, and Chicano and Mexican-American art. The USC Pacific Asia Museum, which she has only recently begun to direct, will offer a counterpart to the Fisher for its focus on Asia and the Pacific Rim.

Holo earned her PhD from UC Santa Barbara, her Master's degree from Hunter College, CUNY, and her Bachelor's degree from Northwestern University.