Lida, originally from Washington, DC, completed her B.A. at New York University where she double majored in art history and journalism. She then spent several years working in the department of painting and sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art, New York. Lida also has has professional and research experience in curatorial departments at the Smithisonian Institution, and most recently the Santa Monica Museum of Art for which she contributed to the 2011 exhibition and catalogue, "Beatrice Wood: Career Woman - Drawings, Paintings, Vessels, and Objects." Her current research at USC focuses on 20th century American art and visual culture, with a particular interest in institutions, exhibition histories, and legacies of modernism. Lida is developing a dissertation project that examines the formation and early years of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art in the 1960s and 70s.