The Online Canadian Art Book Project

In November 2013, the ACI launched its inaugural program the Online Canadian Art Book Project with the release of Jack Chambers: Life and Work by Mark Cheetham, the first in a series of free online e-books.^[8] The project is encyclopedic in nature and meant for a general audience, with authors, who include art historians and curators from across Canada, contributing original scholarship that addresses subjective topics such as an artist's significance.^[10]

Intended to be accessible and inclusive each volume is published in English and French, and in multiple formats and all are freely available on the ACI website.^[3] Institutional partnerships with cultural heritage institutions across Canada afforded the ACI a wealth of material and every edition is well illustrated with reproductions of major works and archival objects, making materials that had been "hidden away in vaults or perhaps able to be seen only at specific galleries" available to a wider audience.^[11]

The artists in the series are usually considered "seminal figures in Canadian art,"^[12] and include works by Joyce Wieland, Yves Gaucher, Pitseolak Ashoona, Prudence Heward and Harold Town.^[13] The Canadian Online Art Book Project also aims to address "holes in Canadian art history"^[14] by featuring artists absent from the mainstream narrative. In an interview founder Angel explains that the ACI means to "redefine the canon"^[7] by providing "a balance between well-known artists, such as Michael Snow, and artists who should be household names but are not, such as Kathleen Munn," a painter who was highly respected in her time, but is now on the fringes of the Canadian art historical canon.^[14]

The ACI Massey Art Lecture Series

Another way that the ACI fulfills their mandate to make "Canadian art history a contemporary conversation,"^[14] is through its Lecture Series, which is open to the public and given by the authors of the online art books on the occasion of the publication of each new title. These lectures, which are held at Massey College University of Toronto, are videotaped and posted on the ACI website.

Other ACI Programs

Other key pillars of ACI's programming include: The Canadian Art Library Series, The Canadian Schools Art Education Program, The Redefining Canadian Art History Fellowship Program, and the Art Canada Institute weekly newsletter.

The Canadian Art Library Series offers a selection of ACI's digital art books in a print format and up to four titles are published annually. Recent titles now available in print include Kent Monkman, Walter S. Allward, Iljuwas Bill Reid, Annie Pootoogook, and Mary Pratt.

Created to complement ACI's Canadian Online Art Book Project, The Canadian Schools Art Education Program provides expert-authored teacher resource guides for primary and secondary school educators to facilitate the study of a wide range of subjects through the work of Canadian artists. The program also offers Independent Student Learning Activities, which can be distributed directly to students and support learning online and at home. All content is open-source, available to audiences free of charge in both English and French.

In 2022 ACI launched The Redefining Canadian Art History Fellowship Program to create a more inclusive art history by supporting studies on Canadian and Indigenous artists whose lives and works are underrepresented. Over the next five years beginning in 2022, this initiative will award five grants of $30,000 to five scholars each June. The inaugural research fellows were announced in June 2022.

ACI's weekly Friday newsletter keeps readers informed of the organization's latest programming, and offers curated selections of Canadian artworks that illuminate current events in the art world and beyond as well as significant moments in Canadian history.

Art Gallery of Ontario Curator Wanda Nanibush’s departure came after a pro-Israel group complained about her social media posts.

A letter sent by the Toronto-based organization Israel Museum and Arts, Canada (IMAAC) to Stephan Jost, the CEO of the Art Gallery of Ontario on October 16, 2023 was leaked online, sparking concerns that Nanibush’s public support of Palestinian causes may have contributed to her departure from the museum. Signed by the leadership of IMAAC which includes Sara Angel who sits on the Board of Directors and is also the Founder and Executive Director of Art Canada Institute, the complaint alleges that Nanibush was “posting inflammatory, inaccurate rants against Israel.” and that she “perpetually denies that Jews are indigenous to Israel.” The letter accused the curator and the co-head of the AGO’s Indigenous and Canadian Art department — of “misleading hate speech” and “unchecked vitriol”, adding: “We don’t accept the AGO’s incapacity and refusal to contain this promotion of hateful disinformation by its employee.” IMAAC claimed that Nanibush, who was a jurist for the recent 2023 Sobey Art Award, Canada's leading contemporary art prize, “has been peddling these lies since 2016”, citing an article she wrote for the now defunct Canadian Art magazine. In the article, which has a standfirst that reads “An Indigenous perspective on the contested land of Palestine”, Nanibush drew links between the Indigenous Canadian and Palestinian experience, writing: “Colonisation marks a before and after where identity is radically altered by loss.”^[15] The IMAAC letter, verified by Hyperallergic^[16] and the Globe and Mail,^[17] decries Nanibush’s social media posts referring to Israel’s role in genocide and colonialism, actions also decried by multiple human rights experts and organizations.

“It’s an appalling letter,” Ontario-based multidisciplinary artist and activist Jamelie Hassan told Hyperallergic.

“It is unfortunate that the first curator of Indigenous art at the AGO has been dismissed in this way,” Canadian visual artist Syrus Marcus Ware said in an email, adding that he was concerned by the way the museum had “silently scrubbed” her from its website.

Meanwhile, the AGO’s former Canadian-art curator Andrew Hunter has written to Canadian and American museum groups, including the Canadian Art Museum Directors Association, suggesting the AGO’s director and chief executive Stephan Jost be dismissed and that the board of trustees face “real consequences.”

Stephan Jost wrote to AGO staff, “Incorporating historical narratives that have been long excluded in institutions like the AGO is very hard work, but 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.”^[18] Nanibush joined the museum in 2016 as its inaugural Curator of Indigenous art. A celebrated Anishinaabe curator, artist and scholar, Nanibush was the co-head of the AGO’s Indigenous and Canadian Art department and co-authored the book Moving the Museum: Indigenous + Canadian Art at the AGO (2023), which won the 2023 Toronto Book Award.^[19]

Based on the contents and condescending tone of the IMAAC letter it is clear that Sara Angel despises Wanda Nanibush but she conveniently exploits Wanda Nanibush's 2023 Toronto Book Award win in her personally curated, Art Canada Institute October newsletter and the December newsletter "Highlights of 2023".

Artists, writers and cultural workers sign open letters criticising Art Gallery of Ontario over departure of Indigenous art curator

On November 29, 2023, an open letter was sent to the AGO with more than 3,500 signatures began with an expression of “outrage at the recent push out of Wanda Nanibush from her position as the inaugural curator of Indigenous Art at the Art Gallery of Ontario, following the bullying of the museum by pro-Israel art collectors and donors”.

The open letter went on to say that the leaked letter from IMAAC, signed by Sara Angel who also sits on the Board of Directors made it “clear” that “pro-Israel donors and supporters of the AGO pressured the museum’s Director and Board of Directors into silencing Nanibush’s ongoing efforts to educate people about Palestinians and their fight for freedom — and her condemnation of what the United Nations has warned is a ‘genocide in the making’ by Israeli forces — which ultimately led to her departure from the institution.” It continues: “The IMAAC letter openly admits this is not the first time its signatories have attempted to intimidate the museum’s administration to punish Nanibush for her expressions of solidarity with Palestinians.”

The letter went on to call for a boycott of the AGO and the Art Canada Institute, whose director, Sara Angel, was a signatory to the leaked letter from IMAAC. Additionally it asked for “a public accounting of how AGO board members were involved in the ousting of Nanibush and request the resignation of those responsible for her departure.”^[15]

As well, more than 50 artists, curators and professors from Indigenous communities in Canada and around the world have signed a letter asking the Art Gallery of Ontario to publicly acknowledge the departure of Anishinaabe curator Wanda Nanibush and the global impact of her work. The letter, released on November 28, 2023, calls for a “genuine response from the Art Gallery of Ontario and a public acknowledgment of the departure of their first Indigenous Curator in the Indigenous and Canadian Art Department.”^[20]

A third letter, published on November 28, 2023 and signed by 44 Governor General Award-winning artists also asked for accountability from the AGO saying, “The forced departure of Wanda Nanibush is an act of political censorship with shades of a new McCarthyism. It undermines principles of artistic freedom and freedom of speech. It also reveals a shallowness to the AGO’s supposed commitment to reconciliation, decolonisation and justice for Indigenous people, and to social justice more generally.”

"Citing Silencing of Arab Voices, Artists Cut Ties to Art Canada Institute"

Hyperallergic, a leading online voice in contemporary perspectives on art and culture, released an article on December 7, 2023, titled “Citing Silencing of Arab Voices, Artists Cut Ties with Art Canada Institute”.^[21] Five days before the Art Canada Institute Show, Lands Within, was to go online Nov 28, Sara Angel insisted that all the work had to undergo a last minute “sensitivity review” to ensure it wouldn't unintentionally alienate or offend readers. Ms. Angel by directing this censorship review to only Muslim and Arab artists clearly attempted to segregate and silence these artist's voices. All the featured artists and others in the show withdrew their work in protest and the show was not mounted. Amid the fallout, several other artists have also withdrawn from projects with the ACI, citing Ms. Angel co-signing a leaked letter from IMAAC (where she sits on the Board), a pro-Israel organization, targeting former Art Gallery of Ontario Curator of Indigenous Art, Wanda Nanibush for her pro-Palestine views.

“The real policies that these institutions have about diversity and inclusion, all this talk about freedom of speech — it is all talk,” Lynn Kodeih, a Lebanese photographer whose work was featured in Lands Within, told Hyperallergic. Kodeih said it was “disappointing” that ACI is failing to uphold its stated commitment to “inclusive multi-vocal Canadian art history.”

Art Canada Institute and Sara Angel claim they are based at Massey College at the University of Toronto

On the Art Canada Institute website and the Sara Angel website, the claim is made that ACI is "Based at Massey College at the University of Toronto". This is in fact not true as confirmed by the Director of Programs and Partnerships at Massey College. "ACI occasionally rents a room at Massey for meetings, they do not have a permanent office at Massey. Massey College is not involved with ACI's editorial decision making, governance or organizational structures".