AGO Curators Wanda Nanibush and Georgiana Uhlyarik win Toronto Book Award

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Moving the Museum documents the reopening of the AGO’s J.S. McLean Centre for Indigenous + Canadian Art

Moving the Museum: Indigenous & Canadian Art at the AGO, edited by Wanda Nanibush & Georgiana Uhlyarik, published in 2023 by the Art Gallery of Ontario and Goose Lane Editions.

So much excitement this week as Curator of Indigenous Art, Wanda Nanibush and Fredrik S. Eaton Curator of Canadian Art, Georgiana Uhlyarik, have been awarded the 2023 Toronto Book Award for their book, Moving the Museum.  Documenting the reinstallation of the AGO’s J.S. McLean Centre for Indigenous + Canadian Art in 2018 and its renewed focus on Indigenous art, Moving the Museum, describes through text and more than 100 images, how art by Indigenous, Inuit and Canadian artists can be put into conversation across time, to better reflect the Nation-to-Nation relationship that Canada was built upon.  

The 2023 Toronto Book Awards volunteer jury described Nanibush and Uhlyarik’s book as “revelatory,” saying the book “kicks the colonial gaze to the curb, insisting instead that museums and galleries radically shift what they’ve been doing and offers page after page enacting the potential of Indigenous art to empower, inspire, and create community.” 

Georgiana Uhlyarik, Fredrik S. Eaton Curator of Canadian Art, accepts Toronto Book Award from Vickery Bowles, City Librarian, on behalf of herself and co-author Wanda Nanibush, AGO Curator, Indigenous Art. Image courtesy Toronto Public Library.

Moving the Museum was one of five books shortlisted for this year’s award, and is the first AGO publication to receive the award, published by AGO in association with Goose Lane Editions.