Lada Umstätter has served as Director of the Geneva University of Art and Design (HEAD – Genève) since 2023.
An art historian, curator, and holder of a PhD in Art History from Lomonosov Moscow State University (2003), she has built an international career spanning Russia, the United States, and Switzerland at the intersection of academia, museums, and the media. Early in her career in Moscow, she worked in cultural communications and hosted a television program dedicated to culture and the arts.
After settling in Switzerland in the early 2000s, she joined the University of Geneva, where she taught contemporary art history for seven years. There, she established a seminar devoted to Swiss art and contributed to the development of the interdisciplinary seminar Research in Progress. Her scholarly work has been supported by several prestigious grants and distinctions, including awards from Pro Helvetia, the Hans Wilsdorf Foundation, and the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF), which also funded several research projects under her leadership.
Alongside her academic activities, she pursued an extensive museum career. Following appointments at the Pushkin State Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow, the RISD Museum (Rhode Island School of Design), the Musée Ariana, and Geneva's Musée d'Art et d'Histoire, she served as Director of the Musée des Beaux-Arts in La Chaux-de-Fonds from 2007 to 2017 and, for two years, as Director of the Musée des Beaux-Arts du Locle. From 2017 to 2022, she was Chief Curator of Fine Arts at Geneva's Musée d'Art et d'Histoire.
As curator of more than eighty exhibitions, she has consistently explored contemporary issues through art and design. Among her major exhibitions are Olivier Mosset. Portrait of the Artist as a Motorcyclist, Le Corbusier and Photography, Everyday Utopia: Soviet Design 1953–1991, AES+F. Theatrum Mundi, Silences, and For the Gallery: Fashion and Portraiture.
A specialist in twentieth- and twenty-first-century Swiss and European art, as well as the cultural history of the Soviet Union, she has maintained a strong commitment to teaching and research throughout her career. She has led research projects and taught at universities in Boston, Fribourg, Geneva, Lausanne, Moscow, Neuchâtel, and Paris, as well as in professional training programs, notably for ICOM (the International Council of Museums). She is the author of several books and has edited numerous scholarly publications and exhibition catalogs.
A recognized figure in Switzerland's cultural landscape, she regularly contributes to broadcast media and specialist publications on issues related to art, museums, cultural heritage, and the transformation of the cultural sector. Her international experience has enabled her to develop an extensive network of collaborations connecting cultural, academic, political, and economic stakeholders in Switzerland and abroad.
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