Kate Taylor

Kate Taylor uses visual art criticism to connect individual works and exhibitions to larger questions of culture, history and public policy. She is the visual art critic at The Globe and Mail and a columnist in its arts section, writing regularly about film and cultural issues alongside visual art. Her coverage stands out for the way it treats paintings, museum shows and cultural events as part of ongoing debates about identity, memory and the role of public institutions.

Visual art and exhibitions

Taylor’s primary focus is visual art, reviewing exhibitions and individual works with close attention to both aesthetic detail and broader context. In coverage of major shows, such as a Jean-Paul Riopelle exhibition she has described as aggressive and seething with energy, she highlights how the formal qualities of the work reflect national and historical currents. Her work on canonical artists includes reporting on attempts to identify the sitter in Vermeer’s “Girl with a Pearl Earring,” treating the painting not only as a masterpiece but as a puzzle connected to archival research and art-historical method. She writes about curators and institutions as much as about artists, including pieces that examine how perspectives such as an Indigenous lens can change how audiences see art in contemporary galleries. Across these reviews, she combines clear description of the work on the wall with an interest in what the exhibition says about the stories museums choose to tell.

Cultural policy and national narratives

Beyond individual shows, Taylor devotes significant attention to cultural policy and the politics of representation.

In arts-focused updates and columns, she has addressed Indigenous repatriation and the long process of returning cultural objects, framing these issues as central to how institutions reckon with their collections and histories. She writes about the patriotic interpretation of the Group of Seven and links those landscapes to contemporary debates about nationalism and public identity. Her commentary extends to letters and opinion discussions where her critiques of American attitudes to free speech and racism are cited, showing that her arts writing often crosses into questions of civic values and public discourse.

This strand of her work makes cultural policy and national narratives a recurring sub-beat, distinguishing her from entertainment reporters who focus solely on new releases or celebrity coverage.

Film, books and cross-media culture

Taylor’s beat includes film and other media, which she approaches with the same critical and contextual lens she brings to visual art. She contributes fall culture previews that survey film, television, exhibits, music and more, helping readers navigate the coming season across multiple art forms. Her columns on culture often look at how different media intersect, pairing film and gallery programming with broader trends in public taste and policy.

Outside her newspaper work, she writes essays on literature and culture that explore themes such as the working lives of women artists and the way museums are shifting from artifacts to stories, extending her cross-media perspective into long-form criticism. She is also a published novelist, which informs occasional pieces where she reflects on the craft of writing and the sources of inspiration behind her own fiction.

This combination of arts criticism and literary work gives her a broad view of how stories move between page, screen and gallery.

Columns and long-view criticism

Taylor is a long-time contributor to the arts pages of The Globe and Mail, and her regular column allows her to track shifts in cultural climate over years rather than weeks. She has held various critic roles within the arts section, including a sustained period focusing on theatre before moving to her current emphasis on visual art and culture.

Her weekly culture writing examines subjects such as Canada Day celebrations, fall arts seasons and year-end lists of essential culture, using these occasions to reflect on what the arts reveal about public mood and identity. She often revisits artists, institutions and policy themes, building cumulative arguments about how national narratives and cultural priorities are changing.

This long-view criticism, rooted in consistent coverage of exhibitions, films and cultural debates, marks her out as an analyst of the arts ecosystem rather than a reporter confined to single events.