Chained to the Gallery: 1970s Protest, Nationalism, and Anti-Racism at the Art Gallery of Ontario.

This article examines an archival fonds at the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) documenting protests at the institution in the 1970s, focusing on two major actions in 1972 and 1974 driven by artist-activists’ opposition to perceived U.S. cultural imperialism and the AGO’s neglect of local Canadian artists. The archive, originally assembled by registrar Charles McFaddin but lost or stolen in the late 1970s and later reassembled, includes materials that reveal a left-wing nationalist activism that sought institutional inclusion yet largely excluded considerations of race and gender. Four decontextualized photographs of an anti-racist picket at the AGO in 1974, found within the archive but otherwise undocumented, complicate the dominant narrative by highlighting overlooked Black and Indigenous resistance contemporaneous with the protests. The article introduces the concept of "settling activism" to describe how radical actions that challenge the status quo may ultimately reinforce existing power structures, illustrating the complex interplay between activism, institutional response, and historical memory in Canadian museum contexts.