Julia Prior

Julia Prior is Head of Digital Media at the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, where she leads the creation of web, mobile and interactive experiences for diverse audiences.

With over two decades spanning technology, UX, creative production and digital strategy, she has delivered major projects at agencies including Impossible Bureau, R/GA New York, and Fantasy Interactive for globally recognised brands.

Julia’s work focuses on the intersection of systems, users and culture, with a strong interest in digital transformation and emerging technologies. She is passionate about how museums can reimagine audience engagement in an increasingly digital world.

Julia Prior will be speaking at the Museum Digital Summit 2026 :

Designing a Conversational Museum: Insights from the Artbot Experiment

How do you make a museum’s knowledge speak? This session shares insights from MCA Australia’s Artbot experiment—our first step toward preparing our knowledge base for natural-language interaction. We’ll investigate what happens when curatorial and interpretive content is restructured for AI retrieval, what this reveals about the limits and possibilities of conversational engagement, and how this work supports future initiatives. The talk will also address the ethical considerations of shaping cultural knowledge for AI, from representation and voice to transparency and responsibility.