Maurice Burns completed his formal education at the Rhode Island School of Design and the Royal College of Art in London, earning his B.F.A. and master’s respectively. He is a MacDowell fellow and Pollock-Krasner Foundation grant recipient. Over his distinguished career, Burns has shown at institutions such as the Royal College of Art, London; the Institute of American Indian Arts in Santa Fe, NM; The Museum of New Mexico; and the Albuquerque Museum of Art, NM. He was featured in the book Black Artists of the New Generation by Elton Fax in 1977 and included in Who’s Who in Black America in 1981. In 2017,  Burns was honored with a solo exhibition at the Center for Contemporary Arts in Santa Fe.