Changing Visions: Artists, Protest, Exhibitions

In 1976, Changing Visions: The Canadian Landscape opened at the Art Gallery of Ontario, including work by many of Canada’s most well-known contemporary artists. However, Changing Visions was sponsored by Reed Paper, the parent company of Dryden Chemical. This latter corporation had, through the 1960s and 1970s, dumped more than 9,000 litres of mercury into the English-Wabigoon River system located in north-western Ontario, Canada. The mercury contaminated the water and food supplies of the Asubpeeschoseewagong (Grassy Narrows) First Nation, the effects of which continue to impact the residents of the area to this day. In February 1976, on the opening night of Changing Visions, 250 people, led by the Anti-Reed Campaign (ARC) and artists in the exhibition, picketed outside the AGO. Many of the artists demanded that their work be removed from the show. It was a key moment of settler artist/activist/Indigenous collaboration. Though the protest of Changing Visions is largely unknown today, it speaks to a moment of deep intervention into the museum, as well as to ongoing attempts to bring together Indigenous and settler communities to protect land. This paper looks back on Changing Visions as a precursor and model for artists resisting today. Though the art works in the exhibition were not themselves critical, the way that those involved in the exhibition mobilized, challenged the status of the art gallery, the sponsors, and even settler culture (with mixed impact).