Breaking: Artists have forced the Azrieli Foundation out of the Toronto Arts Foundation!

The end of the funding relationship between the Toronto Arts Foundation and the Azrieli Foundation marks a definitive victory. After 2 years of organizing and protest, artists and cultural workers successfully wielded our collective power to emphatically refuse opportunities and accolades linked to death and destruction in Palestine and beyond.

The Azrieli Foundation’s mission is to “build bridges between Canada and Israel.” Israel relies on these partnerships to expand its illegal settler colonial project and kill Palestinians with impunity. The Azrieli Foundation is deeply embedded in the Canadian arts landscape while also funding Zionist, white supremacist lobby groups including HonestReporting Canada which dehumanize Palestinians in Canadian media. The Azrieli Foundation is also the charitable branch of the Azrieli Group, Israel’s largest real estate company, with significant assets in illegal settlement infrastructure. Founded by David J. Azrieli, who participated in the Nakba - the ethnic cleansing of Palestine in 1948 - the Azrieli Foundation’s inception and ongoing activities are an affront on Palestinian life, and a betrayal of the work of conscientious arts workers.

Toronto’s artists, cultural workers, arts organizations, and community members called on the Toronto Arts Foundation to cut ties with the Azrieli Foundation beginning in March 2024. This included refusing to participate in Toronto Arts Foundation opportunities, canvassing at events, writing to leadership, exerting public pressure and advocating through internal meetings. Over 450 Toronto artists and cultural workers signed an open letter calling on Toronto Arts Foundation to cut ties with the Azrieli Foundation.

In response, artists were met with displays of bad faith from the Toronto Arts Foundation. Statements by the Toronto Arts Foundation, circulated both internally and publicly, claimed that the Azrieli Foundation is politically neutral despite financial records clearly revealing otherwise. The Azrieli Foundation donated over $23 million to Israel in 2024 alone. Advocates were framed as a fringe group, despite the fact that hundreds of artists showed up repeatedly to make their concerns known, and despite the fact that a majority of Canadians do not want to participate in Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza, across Palestine, and now encroaching into Lebanon and Iran. The Toronto Arts Foundation’s parroting of the Azrieli Foundation’s misinformation came at the cost of community trust, especially among marginalized, racialized, and emerging artists.

Numerous arts organizations such as CanadianStage, Luminato and the Toronto Symphony Orchestra continue to receive sponsorship from the Azrieli Foundation. But arts organizations can no longer ignore calls for accountability from those they are obligated to serve and represent. A small group of politically motivated patrons and donors can no longer artwash genocide through philanthropy. Arts workers are the ones that make the cultural life of our cities thrive, and we have the power to determine how our work is funded and circulated, and what it represents in the face of rising austerity, censorship, and political repression.

To Toronto’s arts community: This landmark shift took the courage of showing up to pickets, turning down contracts, refusing to participate in awards, disrupting events, making banners, and calling and writing to stakeholders. It is only together, that we will continue to successfully confront Zionism in the arts and build toward a free Palestine.

To the Toronto Arts Foundation: We’re still watching, we will not accept restored ties with the Azrieli Foundation and we continue to demand more scrutiny when it comes to your funding partnerships. Send an email to TAF leadership.