Biography

Mary-Dailey Desmarais is Chief Curator at the Montreal Museum of Fine Arts (MBAM). Desmarais joined the MBAM in 2014 as Associate Curator. She was subsequently named curator of International Modern Art in 2015, and promoted to Curator of International Modern and Contemporary Art in 2018. She curated the major exhibitions Paris in the Days of Post-Impressionism : Signac and the Independants (2020), and Once Upon a Time…The Western : A New Frontier in Art and Film (2017), the catalogue for which won several awards. She also curated the temporary exhibitions « For Every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you » and « Volte Face » (2019). Her writing has been published in scholarly journals, anthologies, art magazines, and exhibition catalogues, and she has been an invited speaker at cultural and academic institutions across North America. Previously she served as a member of the board of the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal and as President of its programming committee. She is currently a member of the director’s council of the Clark Art Institute and a member of the Editorial Board of the Inuit Art Quarterly. She is also involved with Centraide, Montreal. Desmarais holds a doctorate in Art History from Yale University, a Master’s degree in Art History from Williams College and a Bachelor’s degree from Stanford University. She has four children.