Vanda Vitali

Dr. Vanda Vitali is a physicist and art historian by training. She has been a member of the international museum community for the last three decades. She held a number of leadership positions: Director, Institute for Contemporary Culture, Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, Canada; Vice President of Exhibitions and Public Programs and Director, New Museum Project, Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, Los Angeles, United States; CEO and Director, Auckland Museum, New Zealand. She is regarded for her work in transforming institutions and their tradition-bound practices into dynamic centers for public engagement. Her innovative approach to exhibits and programming embraces the convergence of different disciplines, bringing together the philosophies and practices of science, art, business and popular culture to examine and discover new ways of thinking about the structure and presentation of knowledge. She has authored numerous articles on museological issues, many of which have been presented at conferences and published in professional journals and books, and has lectured at university level in Paris and Toronto. Her work has received the Blackaby Ingenuity Award by the American Alliance of Museums and she has been decorated by France and Tunisia for her contribution to museological practice.

She is currently the Executive Director of the Canadian Museums Association (CMA) and is focused on museums’ policies on the national and international levels and on training museums’ professionals. The CMA assembles some 2600 museums in Canada and is principally a government funded institution.