Senior Scholar and University Professor Emerita, Zemans is a former director of the Canada Council for the Arts (1988-92), and former dean of the Faculty of Fine Arts at York (1985-88).

Her research focuses on cultural policy; curatorial practice and twentieth-century Canadian art with a particular interest in the development of abstraction in Canada and the work of Canadian women artists. She is co-editor, with Griselda Pollock of Strategies of Engagement: Museums after Modernism (Blackwells, 2007).

Her work on cultural policy has focussed on policies with respect to diversity; policies for senior artists; the role of civil society in the development of international policy; urban regeneration; a comparative study of Japanese and American cultural policy; the role of national cultural institutions in Canadian cultural policy; and free expression, arts support and censorship.

She is a member of the editorial boards of the Journal of Arts Management and the Law, Washington, D.C; the Asia Pacific Journal of Arts and Cultural Management, University of South Australia; and RACAR, the journal of the Universities Art Association of Canada.

A Member of the Order of Canada, she is the recipient of the Queen’s Golden and Diamond Jubilee Medals. She holds honorary degrees from the University of Waterloo, the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, and Concordia University, and she is an Honorary Fellow of the Ontario College of Art and Design.