Introducing VAM's Council President

April 4, 2024

At our Annual Meeting during the Conference last month, Karen L. Daly was elected President of VAM. The following is an excerpt from her introductory remarks:

Thank you all for joining us at the Annual Conference here in Virginia Beach and for your ongoing support of the Virginia Association of Museums. You, our members, are VAM and I am humbled to serve as your President alongside all of you, in partnership with Rick and our hard-working staff team, and with tremendous fellow council members. Thank you, all, for all you do on behalf of our museum community.

Like many of you, my own personal passion for museums dates back to my childhood when my history buff Dad and elementary school teacher Mom dragged my sister and me to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Valley Forge, and Colonial Williamsburg on family vacations, while my friends were off at water parks and Disney World. Now, I think I am just about the luckiest person in the world to “get” to spend my days, indeed my career, in a museum, working alongside dedicated and passionate museum professionals like all of you as stewards of Virginia's cultural, artistic, and natural resources.

Museums are critical to our communities and our state, and in our VAM Strategic Plan adopted last year we set out a vision of collaborative museums throughout the Commonwealth serving as essential community anchors.

As we approach the 250^th anniversary of the founding of our nation in 2026 this vision for VAM, this purpose, is more important than ever. As we heard in our keynote, our museums have a critical role to play in both commemorating the history of our nation and fostering honest conversations about our ongoing struggle to create a more perfect union. Through the 250^th and beyond VAM is here to support all of you and all your institutions, advocating for the importance of museums in our communities and strengthening the cultural sector from the Tidewater to Washington, DC, and from Southwest Virginia to NOVA.

I look forward to working with all of you and our council in the days ahead and expect to focus particularly on issues of advocacy—making the case for our museums—and sustainability—both financial and environmental—so that VAM and our Virginia museums can survive and thrive for the next 250 years.

Please reach out and let me know if you have ideas for how we at VAM can better support you in your work. VAM’s museum community is only as strong as all of you, and we are so much stronger together than any one of us, or any one of our institutions is on our own.

Thank you for allowing me this opportunity to serve this community that I have come to value so highly. I look forward to connecting with you often in the days ahead and hope to see you at one of our upcoming workshops, regional meetups, and next year in Blacksburg at our 2025 Conference.

Karen L. Daly