What Remains: Examining the Limits of Inclusion in Canada’s Largest Art Museum
Amy Fung and eunice bélidor in Conversation
27 January 2026, 3:00pm
Concordia University, EV 3-711
University of Toronto Board of Governors, photographed in the dining room of “The Grange”, Toronto, the home of Goldwin Smith. The individuals present are (from left to right): Dr. D. Bruce MacDonald, Dr. H.J. Cody, Sir William Meredith, Sir Joseph Flavelle, Dr. Colburne (?), Dr. Goldwin Smith, and Sir Edmund.
As a case-study on the limits of inclusion in settler colonial institutions, the focus of this talk examines the founding history of the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) to analyze whether institutions built to advance national values based on extraction and settler supremacy are fundamentally able to undergo the structural transitions of systemic change. Specifically, this research questions the inherent challenges of inclusion within settler colonialism through a historical analysis of museum building and nation-making. The AGO’s historical development is analyzed as the primary case study to critique its institutional origins through the writings and lectures of its key founder, Byron Edmund Walker (1848-1924), a banker and avid cultural philanthropist in Toronto. Examining the institution through the socio-political context of its founding in tandem with nation-making by British imperialists at the dawn of Canadian nationalism, this research explores the historical materialism of the nation. Prior to the construction of public museums in Toronto, Walker was instrumental in mobilizing their interest through stoking the fires of a national imaginary based on the potential wealth garnered from geological surveys that the nascent nation of British Canada saw itself as the sole stewards over. As institutions now attempt to confront their colonial histories one hundred years later, I explore the challenges faced by the largest art gallery in Canada in attempting to change the past without changing its structural values.
eunice bélidor is a curator, author and researcher. She is an affiliate adjunct professor in the Art History Department at Concordia University. Her current practice focuses on questioning as a curatorial method, and on epistolary writing as a creator of curatorial autotheory, and its intersection with care, feminism and racial issues. She has organized multiple exhibitions in Canada and in Europe, and her writing has been published in Esse, Canadian Art, Hyperallergic, the Journal of Curatorial Studies, Invitation, InCirculation, and ESPACE.
Amy Fung is a writer, educator, and cultural organizer researching across histories and identities. She is a SSHRC Postdoctoral Fellow at Concordia University co-hosted by the Department of History and the School of Community and Public Affairs. Her SSHRC-funded PhD dissertation under historian Dr. Laura Madokoro (Carleton University) was a multidisciplinary study on the processes, refusals, and limitations of political recognition via official apologies and commemorations for past injustices and community grievances in a settler state. She is a recipient of the Bora Laskin National Fellowship in Human Rights Research. Her first book, Before I was a critic I was a human being was the recipient of one of the 200 exceptional projects funded through the $35M Canada Council for the Arts’ New Chapter program.
