BARRY LORD AND GAIL DEXTER LORD

Gail and Barry Lord are best known as Co-Presidents of Lord Cultural Resources, the world's largest firm specialized in the planning and management of cultural institutions and programs. Celebrating its 30th anniversary in 2011, the company has completed over 1,800 cultural planning and management assignments in more than 49 countries around the world.

About fifty cultural planning and management professionals provide their services from offices in Toronto, New York, Paris and Madrid, along with project offices wherever they are needed. Services include management consultancy of all kinds, exhibition development, facility planning, and recruitment and training programs. Their client list includes the Louvre, Tate, Museo Guggenheim Bilbao, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and many more.  

Gail and Barry are almost as well known as co-authors of a textbook that has been used in museum studies programs around the world, The Manual of Museum Management (2nd edition, 2009), which has been translated into Chinese, Georgian, Russian and Spanish. They are also co-editors of The Manual of Museum Planning (2nd edition, 1999) and The Manual of Museum Exhibitions (2003), both of which are the favorites of architects and designers. In 2007 Barry edited The Manual of Museum Learning, while Gail co-authored The Manual of Strategic Planning for Museums with Kate Markert. All of these Manuals are published by AltaMira Press.  

Gail was born in Toronto in 1946, and graduated in history from the University of Toronto, where she organized a famous Pop Art Festival. By that time she was already art critic for Canada's largest-circulation newspaper, the Toronto Star. She went on to teach photography and film students at Ryerson University, and edited several books, eventually co-editing the world's first book on the subject -- Planning Our Museums (National Museums of Canada, 1983) -- with Barry. As a museum planner she has played a leading role in the development of many new museums, including The Lowry in Salford, England, the Museum of the African Diaspora in San Francisco, and the Canadian Museum for Human Rights in Winnipeg.

Barry was born in Hamilton (40 miles west of Toronto) in 1939 and graduated in philosophy from McMaster University there before pursuing graduate studies in the History and Philosophy of Religion at Harvard. He began his cultural work as an actor, apprenticing at Canada's Stratford Shakespearean Festival, and as a publishing poet, while completing the National Gallery of Canada's postgraduate museum training program. He was editor of Canada's national art magazine, artscanada, and author of a well-known History of Painting in Canada. Having served as a curator of art, director and chief of education services at several Canadian museums, Barry developed a methodology for museum planning while directing capital funding programs for the National Museums of Canada. He has been actively involved in the planning of many museums around the world, including the Frist Center for the Visual Arts in Nashville, the Singapore Art Museum and the Hong Kong Heritage Museum.

Gail and Barry continue to work together with their colleagues on the development of cultural facilities worldwide, currently including the King Abdulaziz Center for World Culture in Saudi Arabia, the West Kowloon Cultural District in Hong Kong, and Longwood Gardens in Pennsylvania. All of their projects and all of their life experiences have involved them with artists, patrons and the public, and have provided exhilarating experiences of cultural change.