Vlado Horvat was born in Vukovar in 1930, where he went to elementary and high schools. He graduated from the Faculty of Philosophy, Zagreb University, in 1954, history major.
For a short time he worked as teacher in the high school in Vukovar (1956-1961) but soon became head teacher of the same institution, and remained there from 1961 to 1964.
For two years (1964-1966) he was teacher at the College of Education in Osijek, where he lectured in history. In the mid-1960s, at the initiative of Dr Antun Bauer, also born in Vukovar, he went to the Vukovar Municipal Museum. From 1971 to 1979 he held the position of director of Vukovar Municipal Museum. He took his master’s from the Natural Science and Mathematics Faculty of Zagreb University in 1969, in information science, library studies, archive studies and museology, and had the first ever Croatian master’s in museology, with a dissertation on the Museological Presentation of the Turkish Period for the area of the Vukovar Local Museum. After being senior curator in 1978 he acquired the rank of museum adviser.
In 1982 he took a doctorate at the Faculty of Philosophy in Ljubljana University with the topic the Network of Museums of Slavonia and Baranja and was thus the first doctor of museology in the former Yugoslavia. He was promoted to the rank of senior scholarly associate in 1985. From 1986 to 1991 he was science adviser in the Chamber of Commerce of Slavonia and Baranja in Osijek.
After his retirement in 1992 he continued to deal with the history of the Vukovar region. He wrote numerous special papers on historical and museum topics was the main editor of many books and publications, was the author of two full length books, the author of the concepts of the time for the permanent displays in Ilok Municipal Museum and Vukovar Municipal Museum, and the author of concepts for ad hoc exhibitions and their associated catalogues.
His MS monograph on the city of Vukovar awaits publication in Vukovar Municipal Museum. For his work he was decorated with the Order of the Croatian Daystar with Figure of Marko Marulić.

NB. Data taken from the questionnaire, material taken from the Personnel Archives of the MDC, and from an interview recorded on December 24, 2002.