Seattle seems to be ahead in this trend. Mimi Gates runs SAM and Midge Bowman runs the Frye. Both have radically changed the direction that their institutions are going. Most of the Senior Curators in town are women. Why is a Director's gender news?

For reasons similar to why Hillary Clinton's gender matters: Because in museums, the most powerful posts in the country have never been held by women. And if you saw Randy Kennedy's list of possible successors to Philippe de Montebello at the Met earlier this week, you saw that none of them (which is not to say they're the only candidates, just the ones publicly batted around at this point) are women. Not one.

I'd like to point out also that I learned today that Tyler Green wrote a piece that got this discussion really going in 2006 in the Los Angeles Times. In a quick search on that site, I didn't find the piece, but I often find myself unable to locate stuff there. Maybe Tyler will have a link he can post here.