A leaked memo has revealed the resignations of a senior curator on the Artwork Gallery of Ontario (AGO) and two volunteer members of a collections committee after the group voted in opposition to the acquisition of a piece by Jewish American artist Nan Goldin due to allegations of “antisemitism”.
Though the AGO had deliberate to collectively buy Goldin’s moving-image work Stendhal Syndrome (2024) with the Vancouver Artwork Gallery (VAG) and Minneapolis’s Walker Artwork Middle, it pulled out in mid 2025 after its trendy and up to date curatorial working committee voted 11-to-9 in opposition to it. The transfer was surprising, particularly because the AGO already had three Goldin works in its assortment. (The VAG and Walker Artwork Middle proceeded with the joint acquisition.)
Why did one among Canada’s most vital public museums resolve in opposition to buying a piece by an enormously influential artist and activist who was deemed, in 2023, to be probably the most highly effective particular person within the artwork world? In response to an inner memo by AGO director and chief government Stephan Jost that was obtained by The Globe and Mail, some committee members alleged that remarks Goldin made in a 2024 speech at Berlin’s Neue Nationalgalerieabout her “ethical outrage on the genocide in Gaza and Lebanon” had been “offensive” and “antisemitic”. Talking on the Berlin opening of her touring retrospective, Nan Goldin: This Will Not Finish Properly, the artist additionally stated that to name anti-Zionism antisemitic was a “false equivalency used to keep up the occupation of Palestine”.
However in keeping with the memo, committee members who had been in favour of buying Goldin’s work disagreed. Of their view, the artist’s remarks weren’t antisemitic, with some including that “refusing the work due to the artist’s views was censorship”.
In response to the Globe, two individuals “with direct information of the scenario” indicated that John Zeppetelli, the AGO’s curator of contemporary and up to date artwork, who had lobbied for the acquisition, ultimately resigned due to the incident. Zeppetelli, who continues to be working with the Toronto museum as a visitor curator, co-organising an upcoming exhibition of labor by the Italian artist Diego Marcon, didn’t reply to The Artwork Newspaper’s request for remark.
Two members of the trendy and up to date collections committee subsequently resigned from their volunteer roles as effectively, in keeping with the Globe, due to points across the nixed Goldin acquisition.
“9 months in the past, we had been excited concerning the acquisition,” Goldin tells The Artwork Newspaper. “Then we had been informed that the board had met and one particular person had blocked the sale—a really persuasive Zionist.” She provides that she solely realized this week that 11 committee members had voted in opposition to the acquisition.
“It’s so chilling that persons are nonetheless opposing free speech,” Goldin says. “At this level the entire world ought to pay attention to what’s taking place in Palestine and on the very least compassionate. It’s loopy that persons are nonetheless clinging to the conflation of Zionism with antisemitism.” She admits she was “shocked” that “one thing like this might occur in Canada. I do know [the American Israel Public Affairs Committee] is energetic within the US, however I didn’t count on this right here.”
Nan Goldin, Stendhal Syndrome, 2024 (video nonetheless) Collectively owned by the Vancouver Artwork Gallery and Walker Artwork Middle, Minneapolis, Bought with funds from the Curators’ Council Fund for Girls Artists and the Jean MacMillan Southam Fund, Picture: © Nan Goldin, Courtesy of the Artist and Gagosian
What Goldin finds much more disturbing, she says, is “all of the individuals we don’t learn about who’re being blocked—artists being shut down that we don’t learn about”.
After she signed a 2023 open letter supporting Palestinians, she says she obtained emailed demise threats in Hebrew and misplaced vital income at her subsequent exhibition. Nonetheless, Goldin continues to talk out on Palestine. “I couldn’t sleep at night time if I didn’t,” she says.
As Goldin sees it, Zeppetelli “is the hero in all this”. She provides: “Many individuals aren’t talking out for financial causes, they usually have a proper to be scared. However it will be much less scary if extra individuals spoke out.” She says she was unaware of the abrupt departure of the AGO’s Indigenous curator Wanda Nanibush in 2023, allegedly over her stance on Palestine, adopted months later by the departure of Taqralik Partridge, an Inuk poet, performer and editor who was serving as affiliate curator of Indigenous artwork.
A spokesperson for the AGO acknowledged that the establishment initiated a evaluation of the committee assembly through which Goldin’s work was mentioned.
“The AGO’s acquisition practices are thorough, well-documented and publicly obtainable,” the spokesperson stated in an announcement shared with The Artwork Newspaper. “Political opinions are by no means meant to be a part of the method. On this occasion, private political beliefs did floor. In consequence, the AGO engaged an impartial governance knowledgeable to evaluation issues referring to that assembly.”
The spokesperson added {that a} subsequent “reset” would be sure that “such discussions are centered on an art work’s alignment to the AGO’s acquisition standards, are wholesome and productive, and welcome a number of views”.
In response to the VAG, which is at present exhibiting the piece (till 6 April), it attracts on the metaphor of the Stendhal Syndrome—“a psychosomatic situation of dizziness, confusion and even hallucinations triggered by publicity to intense magnificence”—by the juxtaposition of Goldin’s authentic portrait images with pictures from artwork historical past. Goldin followers have been flocking to see the piece since its November opening on the VAG.
“This represents the primary main presentation of Nan Goldin’s work in Vancouver, and we’re proud to share it with audiences in Canada,” a VAG spokesperson tells The Artwork Newspaper. “The gallery is dedicated to presenting a variety of creative voices and supporting creative freedom of expression, whereas fostering open and respectful cultural dialogue. Nan Goldin’s follow has lengthy explored themes of affection, grief, magnificence, activism and the realities of lived expertise.”
