Mary-Dailey Desmarais is Chief Curator of the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts. Motivated by a belief in the transformative powers of art, Desmarais has played a critical role in diversifying the Museum’s collection and is focused on developing artistic programs that inspire new ways of seeing art, its history, and our time. Desmarais was responsible for the reinstallation of the Museum’s Modern and Contemporary galleries, and is currently overseeing major re-installations of the Museum’s Inuit Art collection and Decorative Arts and Design Pavilion. She has also fostered new programming initiatives including the Digital Canvas, which offers the Museum’s historic façade as a platform for new media artists. Recent exhibitions curated include: Seeing Loud: Basquiat and Music (2022 -2023), Nalini Malani: Crossing Boundaries (2023), How Long Does it Take for Once Voice to Reach Another? (2021) and Adam Pendleton: These things we’ve done together (2021).
An active member of her community, Desmarais has served on the jury of numerous prestigious art prizes in Canada and has published widely in scholarly journals, exhibition catalogues, and art magazines on subjects ranging from Impressionism to Global Modern and Contemporary Art. From 2023-2024 she served as a Mentor for the Association of Art Museum Curators (AAMC) Propel Program, and in 2024 was appointed a member of the board of AAMC. She also serves on the board of the Canadian documentary theater company, Porte Parole, which aims to stimulate citizen engagement and create dialogue on democracy. Desmarais holds a Ph.D. in Art History from Yale, an M.A. from Williams College and a B.A. from Stanford University.
