Should the arts remain apolitical?

At a ritzy downtown Toronto hotel last November, on one of the year’s biggest nights for Canadian literature, a pro-Palestinian campaign quite literally took centre stage.

- JOSHUA CHONG

A trio of pro-Palestinian activists were arrested after they allegedly disrupted the 2024 Scotiabank Giller Prize ceremony last November

There, during the opening minutes of the 2023 Scotiabank Giller Prize gala, anti-war activists stormed the ceremony. Flanking host Rick Mercer with signs reading, “Scotiabank funds genocide,” the protesters called out the award’s title sponsor for its multimillion-dollar holdings in a controversial Israeli arms manufacturer. Then, as quickly as they arrived, the activists were escorted out of the star-studded ballroom by police and later charged. It was an event that marked the beginning of an ongoing movement led by pro-Palestinian activists that has upended the Canadian arts scene, with the goal of pressuring cultural organizations to distance themselves from corporations that they say are tied to the Israeli war effort.

Since then, the pro-Palestinian campaign has not abated, throwing museums, festivals, theatres and other cultural groups across the country into a political maelstrom while arts leaders grapple with how to respond to the activists’ demands — and whether their organizations can, or should, remain apolitical. But now, nearly 10 months since the start of the Israel-Hamas war, the reckoning has exposed fault lines throughout the Canadian arts landscape and, in some cases, torn apart some of the country’s most prestigious institutions.

For many cultural groups targeted by the activists, the campaign could not come at a more challenging time, as the arts sector continues to face financial stresses following the COVID-19 shutdown. The confluence of pressures has all pushed some organizations into a tough moral quandary: accede to the demands of the activists, many of whom are members of the artistic community, or maintain relations with the corporate sponsors who are at the heart of the controversy but provide a lifeline for these groups’ very existence.