Chained to the Gallery: 1970s Protest, Nationalism, and Anti-Racism at the Art Gallery of Ontario

This article details research into an archival fonds at the Art Gallery of Ontario (ago) chronicling protests that took place at the institution in the 1970s. The archive, assembled by the institution’s registrar, was either lost or stolen in the late 1970s and then re-collected. The re-assembled archive captures two major actions in 1972 and 1974 that coalesced around artist-activist fear of the cultural imperialism of the United States and anger at the ago’s unwillingness to support local artists. The narrative of cultural nationalism that underlies the two actions is challenged by four decontextualized photographs of an anti-racist picket at the gallery in 1974, found in the same archive but for which no further information was discovered. The article introduces the term “settling activism” to describe a phenomenon wherein radical actions that appear to challenge the status quo might ultimately contribute to its continuance. Using the four photographs to unsettle both the original protests and the author’s own positionality as a beneficiary of past activism, the article illuminates the complex interplay between activism, institutional response, and historical memory and suggests that anti-racist action and intervention have a much longer history in the world of Canadian museums than has been remembered.