Indigenous Art Curator Wanda Nanibush Departs Art Gallery of Ontario

Anishinaabe activist and curator Wanda Nanibush, who in 2016 became the Art Gallery of Ontario’sfirst curator of Indigenous art, has left her role at the institution. A member of the Beausoleil First Nation near Penetanguishene, Nanibush was co-head of AGO’s Indigenous and Canadian art department. She is a coauthor, with Georgiana Uhlyarik, ofMoving the Museum, whichwonthis year’s Toronto Book Award, and was a jurist for the2023 Sobey Art Award. Neither Nanibush nor the institution has offered an official reason for her departure, which was first reported in theGlobe and Mail,but the Canadian daily noted that she had been publicly vocal in her support of the Palestinian cause, linking the experiences of Indigenous peoples living in Canada to those of Palestinians.

The paper additionally reported that a group called Israel Museums and Arts, Canada, had written to AGO director and CEO Stephan Jost complaining that Nanibush posted “inflammatory, inaccurate rants against Israel” to her social media accounts, but that the missive had no bearing on her exit. Instead, theGlobe and Mailcited anonymous sources close to the situation as saying that Nanibush’s outspoken nature in general had infuriated some at the institution. Her departure was cast as a mutual decision, made with the goal of allowing her to continue to express herself freely while not being tethered to the museum and thus not being seen as speaking for it.RelatedCLIMATE CHANGE ACTIVISTS OCCUPY GUGGENHEIM ATRIUMNEW YORK’S CHEIM AND READ SHUTTERING AFTER 26 YEARS At the time of her hiring, Andrew Hunter, curator of Canadian art at the AGO, had praised Nanibush as “someone I felt would come in and be themselves, and be confident and be critical.” In a letter circulated to staff the week of November 13 and extracted in theGlobe and Mail, Jost also lauded Nanibush for her candor.  “One of the many things I always heard from Wanda was her honesty, which at times resulted in difficult conversations, including in the last few weeks,” he wrote.

“She unswervingly inserted Indigenous art and artists, with grace, honesty and pride – which has changed our sense of history and our collective future at the museum.” Nanibush is the third Indigenous curator to depart a major Canadian arts institution in recent years, following Lucy Bell, who in 2020left her roleas head of the First Nations Department and Repatriation Program at the Royal British Columbia Museum and Archives, and Greg Hill, Audain Senior Curator of Indigenous Art at the National Gallery of Canada, who was one of four senior curatorsabruptly let gofrom the museum last year..