[3][4] Vail grew up in Europe and spent 12 years in Florence, Italy; she first became familiar with the Peggy Guggenheim Collection as a child.
[4][6] Before joining the Guggenheim, Vail was an archivist and researcher at the arts publishing house Centro Di in Florence and worked as an assistant curator on independent projects.
She is a co-founder and co-director of Non-Objectif Sud, a not-for-profit artist residency and exhibition program in the south of France.
[7][8] She curated the exhibition (and edited the accompanying catalogue) about her grandmother, Peggy Guggenheim, The Last Dogaressa, on view at the Collection in late 2019.
She also organized exhibitions and wrote catalogue entries about Wassily Kandinsky, Nesuhi Ertegun, Daniel Filipacchi, Robert Mapplethorpe, Lucio Fontana, Richard Pousette-Dart, Gabriele Münter, Pablo Picasso and Monir Shahroudy Farmanfarmaian, among others.