Among the Toronto Arts Foundation’s sponsors are energy giant Enbridge Gas and the Toronto Police Association. While links to private interests in the arts are unsurprising, what has shocked many artists is the funding TAF receives from the largest real-estate company in Israel.
In 2023 alone, the Azrieli Foundation dispensed over $116 million in funds to various programs—with a particular focus on health care and arts & culture. It is the Canadian charitable counterpart to the Azrieli Group, Israel’s largest real estate and holding company.
In response to this funding, artists and cultural workers organized an information picket last month outside the Toronto Arts Foundation’s (TAF) fundraiser gala this year. Attendees included politicians such as city councillor Dianne Saxe and wealthy donors. Outside, artists and community members held banners and distributed pamphlets.
The picket was organized by Artists Against Artwashing—a network of artists and cultural workers that formed in 2021 to demand that cultural institutions across Canada cut ties with organizations implicated in genocide in Palestine.
In particular, picketers called attention to TAF’s “Breakthrough Artists” award which is granted annually and comes with a cash prize for emerging artists. The award is entirely funded by the Azrieli Foundation.
What is the Azrieli Foundation?
For more than a year, Toronto artists have been pressuring the Toronto Arts Foundation, among other institutions, to put an end to their ongoing partnership with The Azrieli Foundation. With $2.4B in assets, The Azrieli Foundation, whose mission is to “build bridges between Canada and Israel,” is the largest family-run charity in Canada.
The organization was founded by real estate developer and former member of the Israeli army David Azrieli. Azrieli was a member of a Zionist militia during the 1948 Nakba—the ethnic cleansing and violent displacement of Palestinians to establish the state of Israel.
Azrieli is also the founder of the Azrieli Group and of Azrieli Holdings, its primary shareholder. The Azrieli Group’s assets include several shopping malls and office buildings in Israel, as well as senior homes, data centres, and operations in the hospitality sector. It also holds significant investments in Bank Leumi, an Israeli bank that violates international law by funding illegal settlements and otherwise profiting from the occupation of Palestine.
“Research by cultural workers [has revealed] the foundation’s involvement in sending money to Israeli-based charities as well as close ties to military intelligence and illegal weaponry research,” shares Karina Iskandarsjah, a member of Artists Against Artwashing. For instance, Azrieli Foundation chairwoman and Azrieli Group CEO Danna Azrieli is also a board member of the Weizmann Institute, which works with the Israeli military technology firm Elbit Systems.
“As this information is coming to light about where their funding is coming from,” notes Iskandarsjah, “more and more artists are refusing to be take part in it and want to spread the information.”
Over the past year and at the height of Israel’s genocide in Gaza, the Azrieli Foundation donated over $20 million in “emergency aid” to Israel. In Canada, it funds Zionist lobby groups like B’nai Brith Canada and Honest Reporting Canada.
Arts workers outside the gala handed out stickers to artists that were attending the event, informing them about the Toronto Arts Foundations partnership with the Azrieli Foundation. Many agreed to enter the gala wearing stickers that read “Cut ties with Azrieli”. Some artists even chose not to enter the venue.
Artists want blood money out of the arts
“Artwashing” refers to the use of the arts and culture as a political tool to distract from and “wash” negative public images, inevitably resulting from the land theft and war crimes Israel continues to wage in Palestine and beyond. Funding in arts and culture is also a useful tool in influencing and shaping narratives around Israel in mainstream Canadian culture.
Artists Against Artwashing point to The Azrieli Foundation’s strong hold and interest in the art and culture sector in Canada. Beyond the Toronto Arts Foundation, their donations go toward the National Arts Centre, the National Gallery of Canada, and the Musée d’art Contemporain, among others.
“The influence around decision making and who gets these awards may be a secondary concern for some, but the primary concern, from what I understand, is that this funding is even permitted within the arts in the first place,” says Iskandarsjah. “More and more people are refusing to be complicit in the types of philanthropy that serves to make genocide more tasteful.”
Broadly, artists, activists, and workers in the city have been advocating against death and destruction in Palestine as part of the “No Arms in the Arts” coalition, of which Artists Against Artwashing is a part. This refusal has taken many forms in Canada’s arts and culture scene.
Hundreds of writers withdrew from the Scotiabank-funded Giller Prize in 2024, resulting in the Giller prize dropping Scotiabank as a sponsor. Artists also disrupted the opening night of Azrieli-funded Canadian Stage’s Dream in High Park this summer in Toronto.
Toronto Arts Foundation denies responsibility
Over the past year, artists and advocates have held meetings with the Toronto Arts Foundation. Karina Iskandarsjah met with the director of TAF. She says that even when a surface-level attempt to adress concerns has been made, “it always ends with [them saying] ‘I’m sorry. It is our board members who make these decisions,”…and of course they will not connect community members with the board.” On other occasions, artists were dismissed and asked to bring their concerns directly to the Azrieli Foundation.
In a financially precarious environment with decreased funding for the arts, advocates have also been told by the Toronto Arts Foundation that their refusal to cut ties with the Azrieli Foundation comes from a fear of setting a precedent that could lead them to lose future funding.
But, as Iskandarsjah points out, “A lot of our research has shown that the Azrieli Foundation gives out very small grants for singular projects. It’s actually a lot of work to get an unstable, small amount of money that’s actually not a sustainable use of people’s time and labour and resources.”
Iskandarsjah questions the importance of Azrieli Foundation funds to TAF, given that they are minimal and receiving backlash.
“We are trying to get to the heart of that, and that’s why we are trying to speak in terms of the policy and and ethics and values that [TAF] communicates to the community. We are trying to get to the bottom of that paradox.”
In the meantime, as more and more artists turn down contracts with Toronto Arts Foundation, Artists Against Artwashing asks: “How many artists will TAF discard, marginalize and ignore in service of keeping Zionist funding?”
Dismissals from Toronto Arts Foundation, Canadian Stage, and other institutions targeted by advocates have only strengthened the movement of artists and cultural workers against artwashing, Iskandarsjah says.
In an increasingly precarious environment for artists, “we need to actually rethink how we support our communities and how we support each other in a more mutual and sustainable way that’s not reliant on the money off of war profiteering. There needs to be a better solution than than that.”
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