The Visual Arts Alliance came together during a summit of stakeholders in the visual arts held in 2007, organized by the Canadian Museums Association and funded by the Canada Council for the Arts and various corporate sponsors. The summit brought together artists, curators, those working in art museums and artist-run centres, art dealers, collectors, educators, art journalists and others to consider the issues facing the visual arts as a whole and ways of moving forward. The Visual Arts Alliance came together during the summit with the goals of improving the socio-economic conditions of artists and pursuing the health of our art galleries, museums, artist-run centres and commercial art dealers so that Canada’s extraordinary visual arts can flourish.