Protesters form a picket line outside the venue where the Giller Prize award ceremony took place, in Toronto, on Nov. 18.Chris Young/The Canadian Press
It all started when Wanda Nanibush, the Indigenous curator at the Art Gallery of Ontario, left her job without explanation.
Nanibush’s outspoken views, including public support for Palestinian causes, had rankled some staff and gallery supporters. She left only weeks after Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack against Israel – during which 1,200 Israelis were killed and 250 taken hostage – and Israel’s retaliatory invasion of Gaza, a war that has now killed more than 45,000 Palestinians, according to Gaza health authorities. Internally, the gallery represented Nanibush’s departure to staff as a mutual decision that would allow her the freedom to express herself. Nanibush made no comment and now only posts to a private social-media account.
At the time, her departure felt like an unusually nasty development in the public debate over the war in Gaza. But a year later, as the conflict continues, it is the kind of episode that has become commonplace on the Canadian arts scene. Most recently, Hal Niedzviecki, founder and publisher of Broken Pencil and a vocal supporter of Israel on social media, announced in November that he is closing the independent zine-culture magazine after 30 years because, as critics called for his resignation, the publication lost crucial revenue from the annual Canzine festival it had to cancel.
Along with a series of cancelled performances and exhibits, over the past year other events were protested or interrupted, including a Toronto International Film Festival screening of an Israeli film, a fundraiser for Israeli military families at the Toronto comedy club Yuk Yuk’s and an Ottawa fundraiser dedicated to freedom of expression. The ceremony for the annual Giller Prize in Toronto took place under heavy security while pro-Palestinian protesters, who had jumped on stage in 2023, stood outside on the street crying “Shame!”
Behind the scenes in Canada, artists allege they have lost work because they are Palestinian or have voiced support for Palestinians – or because they are Jewish or expressed support for Israel.
In a pattern that has also unfolded in the United States and Europe, arts organizations, from the largest to the small, have found themselves embroiled in protests or controversies as complaints force event cancellations, artists decry censorship and administrators desperately juggle incompatible demands.
While real war still rages in the Middle East, Canada’s cultural class is fighting battles over social-media posts and trigger warnings.
Internally, arts organizations are debating their stance in a way that no previous social or geopolitical issue has forced them to do.
“Black Lives Matter was so easy, so easy to jump on a bandwagon and declare – without thinking what that means. A little too easy,” said Cheryl Sim, director and chief curator at the PHI Foundation, a contemporary art space in Montreal. “No one was equipped for this one.”
Like many of her colleagues, Sim argues that cultural organizations exist to provide a platform for artists and should not themselves make political statements, despite pressure, often from their own young staffers, to speak out. “We don’t make statements through social media; we make statements through programming, through artists,” she said. “As an arts institution we have to get back to basics: What is your job here?”
On the other hand, some feel a moral obligation to take a stand.
“Art is political and making a statement on an issue is a political act, but so is not making a statement,” said Aislinn Rose, director of the Theatre Centre, a Toronto performance incubator that held a 24-hour poetry reading for Nakba, the day marking the displacement of Palestinians by the new state of Israel in 1948. “Maybe some organizations don’t think about that: Silence is also a statement and that will be remembered.”
Still, others welcome statements – but not boycotts or protests.
“It’s so easy to tear things down,” said Noah Richler, jury chair for the 2024 Giller Prize, the target of a writers’ boycott because corporate sponsor Scotiabank has a stake in the Israeli weapons manufacturer Elbit Systems. “I’m not asking writers to say nothing but the manner in which they do it is important. … We need to engage.”
This disagreement over whether arts groups should make statements turned ugly at the annual conference of the Professional Association of Canadian Theatres in Montreal in May. Prior to the conference, Labour and the Arts – an ad hoc group concerned about the precarious jobs of young arts workers – had issued an open letter calling on Canadian theatres to support their staff’s freedom of expression and not penalize workers who spoke up for Palestinians. To allow debate on the issue, PACT organized a town hall, a tense gathering that seems to have left few people satisfied.
The speakers included representatives of Nightwood Theatre, a Toronto feminist company, who said they had to be careful to avoid anything their funders would interpret as partisan activity. (A few years ago, the group had been warned by Ontario’s Trillium Foundation about a reposted social-media item – one unrelated to Gaza – that the funder considered politically partisan.) That was followed by about 10 speakers expressing their distress over events in Gaza and accusing theatre leaders of censorship. The session ended after a Jewish member who said the open letter harmed her was heckled.
Afterward, some Jewish members said they felt it is was not Israel but their Judaism that was under attack. Other members expressed frustration that theatres were cherry-picking their causes, supporting feminism, for example, but not Palestinian rights. Some expressed this as a clear generation gap: The cautious old guard needed to move out of the way.
The politics of the moment have left some arts organizations approaching public debate with extreme caution, walking a tightrope between free speech and offended audiences. When writer Kagiso Lesego Molope made an impromptu speech about starving children in Gaza at the Politics and the Pen gala in Ottawa in May, 2024, she was escorted out by security. But a few weeks later, the Writers’ Trust of Canada, one of the organizers, apologized.
Soon after, the charity that supports Canadian writers posted its speech policies on its website. It says the group does not comment on politics or global conflict itself, but it listed guidance to writers that opened the door for them to do so: “Winning authors are encouraged to use their time at the podium as they choose. … Venue security will not remove any person who peacefully and respectfully express their views. … We will not tolerate disrespectful speech … especially not hate speech or abusive language.”
While these disagreements swirl around artists’ and arts groups’ speech, other controversies have erupted over programming itself.
Perhaps the most tortured arts controversy has been that surrounding the decisions by the Belfry Theatre in Victoria and PuSh Festival in Vancouver to cancel a production of The Runner. A successful one-man stage show written by Christopher Morris and on tour since 2018, The Runner concerns an Israeli emergency volunteer who chooses to help a young Arab woman instead of an Israeli soldier. Morris is neither Israeli nor Jewish and the play, by implication, condemns many Israelis.
Nonetheless, pro-Palestinian protesters argued it only represented Zionist viewpoints and, after a difficult community meeting, the Belfry decided to withdraw it. This, in turn, led to an outcry from voices in both the Jewish and wider cultural community who felt the play was being censored for little reason other than its Israeli setting.
Meanwhile, the PuSh Festival, which offers a lineup of international performing arts at multiple venues, tried to continue with its production, publicly communicating about the play’s themes and organizing a complementary art installation by a Palestinian refugee.
However, PuSh finally cancelled its production of The Runner after artist Basel Zaraa refused to let his work be shown at the festival if Morris’s play was programmed, saying it dehumanizes Palestinian characters as anonymous perpetrators of violence and does not explain Israel’s occupation of Gaza and the West Bank. With his show dropped for a second time, Morris said in a statement: “It’s unsettling when Canadian theatres cannot be a space for the public to engage in a dynamic exchange of ideas. I believe theatre must be a place where contrasting perspectives are programmed and celebrated. Now more than ever, we need to listen to each other, engage in different viewpoints, and find our shared humanity.”
These decisions repeat a common scenario: Arts groups have tended to react swiftly to public complaints, sometimes pulling work, changing signage or cancelling programming altogether – only to find themselves trapped in a second controversy by those actions. Vague public statements reiterating commitments to both freedom of expression and community safety do little to resolve the situations and are often interpreted as dishonest.
For example, when Vancouver’s Centre of International Contemporary Art cancelled a display of Barbie-inspired satirical photographs by Israeli-Canadian artist Dina Goldstein, curator Viahsta Yuan cited practical reasons in an interview with The Globe and Mail, including issues with framing and overlap with another artist’s work. Goldstein was convinced the real problem was her social-media feed, which showed previous trips to Israel and included posts lamenting the Oct. 7 attack. She showed The Globe text messages from Yuan saying there had been complaints about her participation in the show.
Similarly, the gallery in the Aurora Cultural Centre, north of Toronto, permanently closed a show that included works mentioning Palestine after complaints from viewers and online accusations of antisemitism. A crowd-sourced work by co-curator Chantal Hassard, who is the grandchild of a Holocaust survivor, included the words “Free Palestine” and “intifada” written by contributors from the wider public, while work by Hala Alsalman included a map with the label “(Israel) Palestine.” The gallery’s own review in response to the complaints found “no harmful intent or content” but spokesperson Jane Taylor said the gallery should have warned audiences of difficult content and that the centre’s staff is not large enough “to make this exhibit happen the way it should for the artists and the community.”
Hassard said her work represented the collective unconsciousness, and used terms that were in the zeitgeist, while Alsalman said she was merely identifying the historic name of Israel. “Simply referencing Palestine at this time warranted this kind of erasure,” Alsalman says.
Some point out that the programming dilemmas related to Israel and Palestine predate the current war.
“In the theatre world, there has been a long-standing fear of programming that is critical of the Israeli state,” said playwright Natasha Greenblatt, recalling the controversies of the 2000s over plays such as My Name is Rachel Corrie – about an American protester killed by an Israeli bulldozer that Canadian Stage programmed and then cancelled in 2006 – and Seven Jewish Children, the much-debated 10-minute history of Israel by the pro-Palestinian British playwright Caryl Churchill. “People don’t want to program work that is explicitly critical of Israel for fear of losing funding, losing subscribers or pushback from Zionist groups.”
Greenblatt, a Jewish playwright who has co-written a script with Palestinian-Canadian writer Rimah Jabr, is part of Theatre Artists for Palestinian Voices, an association that aims to bring stories by Palestinian artists to Canadian stages.
Her play, Two Birds One Stone, features a conversation between a Jewish Canadian and a Palestinian Muslim and was included in a 2023-24 season dedicated to the Middle East at Montreal’s Teesri Duniya Theatre. “Our entire season is a cultural front to mobilize public opinion in support of a lasting peace, in support of freedom, in opposition to settler colonialism – and at the same time, fighting Islamophobia and antisemitism,” artistic director Rahul Varma said.
That desire for compromise is unusual but not unique.
Leslie Hurtig, director the Vancouver Writers Fest, was determined that the October, 2024, festival would address events in Gaza and purposefully invited speakers on highly topical issues including contemporary political writing, the Palestinian/Israeli conflict and the experience of trauma related to Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack. She then gave all hosts extra instructions about how to deal with disruptions, whether by panelists or audience members.
“We did not see the pushback that I was concerned about. We did not need to implement any of our safety or emergency measures,” Hurtig said. “Everyone was very open-hearted and everyone was listening respectfully, which is what we asked them to come prepared to do.”
Abroad, 2025 begins with only faint hopes of a ceasefire in Gaza, but in Canada there are occasional signs that the arts can reassert their role as a forum for discussion rather than dispute.
“What kind of kitchen table conversation can we have? How can we share a meal and talk?” asks Barbara Fischer, director of the art museum at the University of Toronto where the campus was occupied by pro-Palestinian protesters for two months in the summer. With diaspora politics bringing foreign wars home to Canada, Fischer sees multiculturalism as increasingly illusory, but she also believes the arts provide an important arena in which to consider otherness and diasporic experience.
“If anywhere there is a place for difference it should be in the arts,” Fischer said. “War is an abhorrent way to solve problems: I’d like to think the arts are centred in difference and complexity.”
