Gail Lord reflects on four decades reshaping museums

Gail Lord, the renowned Toronto museum and cultural planner, is retiring. Sort of. “I thought I might want to do a few other things,” she says, “but nothing could be more interesting than what we do.”What she does – and what she’s passing along to new leaders at Lord Cultural Resources – is guide the way the world sees art, history and culture. Lord, an art critic, founded the company with her now-late husband, Barry Lord, in 1981. Since its inception, it’s advised, shaped and reshaped institutions from the Museo Guggenheim Bilbao to the Canadian Museum for Human Rights to Giza’s Grand Egyptian Museum.