Sarah Milroy CM (born 1957)[1] is the executive director and chief curator of the McMichael Canadian Art Collection in Kleinburg, Ontario, responsible for the 2021 exhibition and editor of the book Uninvited: Canadian women artists in the modern moment (2021), as well as co-editing with Ian Dejardin, the previous director, Tom Thomson: North Star (2023)[2] and contributing to numerous books on art, including Mary Pratt, From the Forest to the Sea: Emily Carr in British Columbia, David Milne: Modern Painting and co-editing Early Days: Indigenous Art at the McMichael.
[3][4] Milroy was born in Vancouver, the third daughter of Elizabeth Nichol (née Fellowes), who founded Vancouver's Equinox Gallery in 1972[5] and John Lang Nichol, a Liberal politician and senator who served in the Second World War and was made a Companion of the Order of Canada.
[4] Milroy also wrote essays for catalogues, often for shows she curated or co-curated, on artists such as Greg Curnoe (2001) and Jack Chambers (2011), both for the Art Gallery of Ontario,[9] as well as Mary Pratt (2013), Lionel LeMoine FitzGerald (2019),[10] Gathie Falk (2022)[11] and others.
[3] For instance, she and Dejardin balanced and co-curated A Like Vision: the Group of Seven & Tom Thomson, works selected from the gallery's collection by members of the Group of Seven, to mark the 100th anniversary of its founding and an exhibition of Tom Thomson,[13] (both also edited the accompanying book catalogues for the shows) with Uninvited: Canadian Women Artists in the Modern Moment, this time curated by Milroy, a show which also had a major book catalogue edited by her, on 40 modernist Canadian women painters, each one accompanied in the text by a scholarly essay by Canadian art historians.
Uninvited upheld the accomplishments of women artists and was widely reviewed as offering a wider and more inclusive picture of the visual arts in Canada during a pivotal modern period.