Women at the Helm: How Jean Sutherland Boggs, Hsio-yen Shih, and Shirley L. Thomson Changed the National Gallery of Canada

"In addition to its thorough analysis of the challenges faced by women in leadership positions, this is a book about women leaders and their everyday work. Women at the Helm paints a rich picture of what it means to lead a major art institution and tells us as much about the history of the National Gallery of Canada as it does about the women who led the institution during a very formative period." Anne Whitelaw, Concordia University and author of Spaces and Places for Art: Making Art Institutions in Western Canada, 1912–1990

"Seldom have I read a book in which the issues facing institutions and their directors are so deeply researched, so clearly synthesized, and so engagingly presented. Diana Nemiroff demonstrates the complex circumstances in which each director found herself and lays out in detail the obstacles of bureaucracy, the veiled challenges to women in leadership positions, and the need for arm's-length governance of national cultural institutions. Women at the Helm is a fascinating page-turner." Joyce Zemans, York University and co-editor of Museums after Modernism: Strategies of Engagement

“In this vibrant intellectual history of the National Gallery of Canada, Diana Nemiroff draws out the leadership and legacy of three women guiding this key Canadian institution from the 1960s to the 1990s.  Written with a deft knowledge of cultural policy, the gallery’s internal workings, and the importance of curators and artists, this fine book reveals the many challenges of the gallery in navigating this turbulent and transformative period.  Nemiroff never loses sight of the research, exhibitions, and artworks that were often at the centre of debate, discussion, and controversy under these three exceptional directors.” 2022 Ottawa Book Awards jury

"This is an important book, and the successes and failures that Nemiroff lays bare make for essential reading for anyone interested in Canada’s artistic heritage or in institutional leadership." RACAR