Director of the Kumu Art Museum, the biggest branch of the Estonian Art Museum.
She studied art history at the University of Tartu, at the Christian-Albrecht University of Kiel and at the Estonian Academy of Arts. From 2002 to 2013, she served as the director of the Kadriorg Art Museum. In 2013–2016, she lectured at the University of Tartu and defended a PhD thesis Enlightenment Art. Baltic Dilettanti and Drawing Practices at the Turn of the 19th Century. Polli’s main field of research is Baltic German art and visual culture, including art education and art as a (women’s) pursuit. She has organised and curated exhibitions on older German, Baltic German and Estonian art, including Between Dresden and St. Petersburg. Artist Twin Brothers von Kügelgen (2015), as well as the new permanent display in the Kumu Art Museum, Landscapes of Identity: Estonian Art 1700–1945 (2021, with Linda Kaljundi). Kadi Polli has written numerous articles, compiled catalogues and contributed to the major publication series History of Estonian Art. From 2014 to 2016, Kadi Polli chaired the Estonian Society of Art Historians and Curators.