Abstract

This thesis explores how Dr. Jean Sutherland Boggs (1922-2014) navigated her position of power as the first woman to direct the National Gallery of Canada (NGC). Boggs worked as director from 1966 to 1976. She returned to Ottawa in 1982 to lead the Canada Museums Construction Corporation, formed to oversee the construction of a new building for the NGC and the Museum of Man (now the Canadian Museum of History). This study looks at Boggs’s tenure as NGC director as a case study on gender and power in Canadian art institutions. Photographs of Boggs, alongside archival material, are analyzed to explore her accomplishments during her tenure. These photographs are a method to denote the different ways in which Boggs has been represented and how she presented herself. This thesis will examine Boggs’s significant contributions to the NGC, including reinvigorating the NGC’s public image, hiring new staff, expanding the collection, and ultimately, helping to construct its permanent home. Her vision for the NGC has left an imprint on the building and institution that she helped to build. Drawing on feminist and historiographical theories, alongside the contexts of the changing museum in contemporary society, and women’s entrance into the labour force in the 1960s, this thesis situates a turning point in the NGC’s history.