To: the Art Gallery of Ontario, Re: Wanda Nanibush (and You Asking Folks for Money)
In response to Zionist pushback about its first Indigenous curator of Indigenous art's decolonial opinions, the AGO forced said curator out and would also like to remind you to renew your membership.
The following is an updated version of an email I sent to the AGO’s membership department.
For information regarding Curator Wanda Nanibush’s sudden exit from her position at the AGO, the following are good places to start:
Questions Arise as Indigenous Curator Suddenly Departs Toronto Museum
AGO loses its cool over equity, reconciliation and Israel-Palestine
Indigenous Art Curator Wanda Nanibush Departs Art Gallery of Ontario
To the leadership team at the Art Gallery of Ontario-
I understand that my annual pass to the museum has expired. I have been prompted to renew it. I will not be. This is due to your choice to push Wanda Nanibush from her curatorial position last month, following “complaints” submitted by the Israel Museums and Arts, Canada (IMAAC) to you regarding Nanibush's support of Palestinian freedom and condemnation of the state of Israel's settler colonial occupation of Palestine.
Before you ask, I have indeed read the letter that your director/CEO has released regarding Nanibush’s removal. Or rather, I have read Stephen Jost's open letter "regarding" Nanibush’s removal; the piece so loudly avoids any mention of Nanibush or the truncation of her career at the AGO, regarding is not actually an accurate verb.
Here is what Jost's letter does do:
not name Nanibush
not name Palestine
not name the Israeli state
not name IMAAC
not indicate accountability from Jost or any other members of the AGO team
Additionally, there’s lots of "being brave" language in this letter. Lots of "hard conversations" mentioned. He does the whole “We are taking the time to deeply review and reflect on our commitments to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission Report” dance that so many non-Indigenous entities have done since the TRC was first formed. He manages to sneak in a little note about how “the AGO remains fundamentally and fully committed to showing, acquiring and programming Indigenous art, voices, and stories,” which was a wildly white, colonizer thing to very easily NOT say in the same proverbial breath as “sorry about the last few weeks” (ACQUIRING Indigenous art, voices, and stories. My god.).
But, really, who has the time?
Who has time for an open letter from a guy making scads of money at the top of a museum heap? Who has time for non-apologies? Who has time for the same bullshit happening over and over again, particularly to Indigenous women? The TRC ceased operations in 2015, yet the same lines about "we are listening" and "I hear you" and "we have some challenging work ahead of us" are still getting trotted out. What this letter has revealed is that you, the leadership team of the AGO, have done next to nothing to take the TRC's 94 Calls to Action into consideration. The AGO has done so little, in fact, that when one group complained about the AGO’s Indigenous curator of Indigenous art having spoken out against the colonization being enacted by the Israeli state against Palestinians in light of the former’s unfolding genocide against the latter, the museum simply, uh, got rid of that curator.
TL;DR: your (forced) loss of your museum’s first Indigenous curator of Indigenous art has revealed not only exactly how much you depended on Nanibush's work and position to pull the its reconciliatory weight, but exactly how willing you were and are sacrifice Indigenous people (particularly women) for the sake of white Canadian propriety.
An annual pass to the AGO is $35. That money won't cover a week’s worth of groceries for me in the current economic climate. It is nowhere near how much I need for my hydro bills. It is not a lot, and I know I'm half a drop in a province-sized bucket in choosing to withhold it from you and your institution. But all the same, I am. And if enough of us also withhold $35 from you, maybe that’ll be something. It won’t change what you’ve done, but it’d be something.
A final note, before I go—
You’ve had three white male artists feature this fall. That’s wild. You’ve already gotten the flak for that, you’ve been told how ignorant that course of decision-making was, I’m not here to point to all of that, but I do want to speak to the fascinating juxtaposition of your decision to force Wanda Nanibush out of her position and your current hosting of an enormous Keith Haring exhibition. Because it’s funny, in this sort of fucked way.
A huge portion of Keith Haring's artwork was devoted to calling attention to the American HIV/AIDS epidemic in the late 20th century. I imagine you’re aware— I haven’t seen the show you’ve got (my $35 annual pass didn’t allow me to go until after the opening), but I’m sure it features his activist work to some degree because so much of what he did was activist work. Millions of people died from AIDS because president Ronald Reagan and many other powerful Americans decided that gay men dying was preferable to finding a solution to a disease ravaging their communities. Keith Haring died from AIDS because the reality of that epidemic was so viciously silenced by rich, white men in power, but until he died, he was railing against those men with his art.
Do you see where I’m going, here?
Keith Haring died of the disease he was trying to get people to understand, even as those in power silenced him and his peers about that disease.
Here the AGO is, demonstrating its own participation in silencing: removing an employee in order to demonstrate complicity with the Israeli state and silence the genocide of Palestinians.
What next? I want to ask if you’re kidding, but it is clear that you’re not.
Your conduct has not only been despicable and colonially complicit— it has been boring. Of course your museum was just like everyone else. Of course there was no deep change occurring in the years following the upheavals of the TRC’s work. Of course you did this.
“Acquiring Indigenous art, voices, and stories.” As though Indigeneity can be acquired. As though attempting to possess that which cannot be possessed, only held by its protectors, is anything but stealing.
Acquiring. Jesus fucking christ.
Un, yet entirely, believable.
Regards,
Abby Conklin