The Azrieli Foundation, a charitable organisation with ties to Israel’s largest real estate company, will cease its support of the Toronto Arts Foundation (TAF) following a protest campaign by Canadian artists and arts workers. In demonstrations and letters, members of the group Artists Against Artwashing (AAA) have alleged that the Azrieli Foundation is “resourced by this genocide and land theft”, referring to the ongoing war in Gaza.
The Azrieli Foundation and TAF have said that the end of their funding agreement is unrelated to the protests by artists and art workers. Nevertheless, AAA wrote in a statement earlier this week: “This victory comes after two years of organising and protest, including a disruption of Mayor Olivia Chow’s speech at the Toronto Arts Foundation Mayor’s Evening for the Arts on November 20, 2024.”
Members of AAA repeatedly disrupted that event, which coincided with the launch a national campaign to protest Azrieli Foundation funding of cultural organisations. The AAA and its supporters have been calling on TAF to cut ties with the Azrieli Foundation since March 2024, and later that year delivered an open letter to TAF’s leaders signed by more than 450 artists and cultural workers.
AAA has claimed that the Azrieli Foundation is “deeply embedded in the Canadian arts landscape while funding Zionist lobby groups including Honest Reporting Canada whose advocacy dehumanises Palestinians in Canadian media”. According to the AAA, several prominent Canadian cultural organisations continue to receive funding from the Azrieli Foundation, including Canadian Stage, the Luminato Festival, the Toronto Symphony Orchestra and the National Arts Centre. The foundation’s website lists numerous recipients of its support in the visual and performing arts, as well as healthcare, education, architecture and design, history and other fields.
Asked by The Art Newspaper if the termination of funding from the Azrieli Foundation was a result of AAA’s campaign and other opposition, Dane Bland, TAF’s director of development and engagement, said: “No that is not a correct understanding.” He did not elaborate on the end of Azrieli Foundation’s support for TAF.
Heather Sherman, the director of communications for the Azrieli Foundation, tells The Art Newspaper: “We are aware of false claims alleging our partnership with the Toronto Arts Foundation has ended as a result of baseless accusations.” She added that the foundation, which has been supporting TAF’s Breakthrough Artist Award since 2023, “is shifting its focus to new opportunities to support Canadian arts and culture. We are proud of what we have accomplished with the Toronto Arts Foundation and we are committed to finding new ways to collaborate in the future.”
Sherman adds that the Azrieli Foundation “condemns the false, hateful and willfully misleading mischaracterisations of our work and our organisation”, claiming that allegations made against the foundation “are often antisemitic”.
Vince Rozario, a spokesperson for AAA, says the group’s organisers “refuse the characterisation that stating these facts, or demanding accountability of arts funders constitutes antisemitism”. He says the “factual account of the investments that the Azrieli Foundation has made in activities that have a direct bearing on the ongoing genocide in Gaza, and the repression of Palestinian voices in Canada” are “easily verifiable through the organisation’s own charitable tax filings, its annual reports and the public statements of its officers”.
AAA also alleges that the Azrieli Group real estate company has “significant assets in illegal settlement infrastructure in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem, and shares in Bank Leumi, an Israeli bank violating international law by financing illegal settlements and extracting natural resources in Palestine”. Other organisations have made similar allegations about the company’s activities and investments in illegal West Bank settlements. The Azrieli Group disputes these allegations.
In a recent statement Naomi Azrieli, the chair of the Azrieli Foundation, addressed recent criticism of the foundation and stated that it “is a distinct entity from the Azrieli Group, with an independent board of directors and a separate vision, mission and structure” and that “the foundation is not the philanthropic arm of the Azrieli Group”.