FEW HEADS OF MUSEUMS ARE WOMEN.(SHOWTIME)

Byline: CHRISTOPHER KNIGHT Los Angeles Times

In January, the Seattle Art Museum made a shocking announcement. Mary Gardner Neill had accepted the board of trustees' invitation to become director of the museum, a post she will assume in May.

What was shocking was not the nature of Neill's qualifications for so demanding a job. A respected scholar of Asian art, she has been director since 1987 of the Yale University Art Gallery, one of the foremost university museums in the country. Furthermore, she has worked in the museum field for nearly 20 years.

No, what took observers by stunned surprise was far simpler: Mary Gardner Neill is a woman. With her appointment in Seattle, she becomes one of just three women currently holding the job of director in a major art museum in the United States.

The glass in the glass ceiling for women in the museum profession remains stubbornly thick. Today, only two other women Anne d'Harnoncourt at the Philadelphia Museum of Art and Kathy Halbreich at Minneapolis' Walker Art Centerhold directorships at museums that rank among what are generally considered the largest or …