Artists and faculty members are calling out York University for censorship after the long-time curator and director of the Joan and Martin Goldfarb Gallery of York University (GGYU) was abruptly terminated this month. Meanwhile, some are raising questions about potential donor influence.
On Dec. 2, York University President Rhonda Lenton sent an email to the university’s entire faculty announcing that Jenifer Papararo, who had led programming at GGYU since 2020, had been dismissed. The email, viewed by The Grind, did not provide any reasons for Papararo’s dismissal.
Amy Ching-Yan Lam, an artist whose work is currently exhibited at GGYU, is speaking out against the decision to dismiss Papararo, and what she calls censorship of her work.
Lam’s exhibit, 83% Perfect, includes an animation titled Acceptable Protest, which she created alongside her collaborator Emerson Maxwell. The satirical video critiques how universities manage political protest on campus, and it is based on protest policies from universities across Canada and the U.S.
In an interview with The Grind, Lam says that when Papararo first saw a draft of the Acceptable Protest animation, the curator told her “the donor and President Lenton were going to be upset about it.”
Papararo then met with President Lenton, who expressed her unhappiness with the draft, according to Lam. What followed was a long process of scrutinizing the work and negotiating changes.
Lam shared these allegations at the launch of her book, 83% Perfect, which was held at the gallery on Saturday, Dec. 13. She told the audience: “I think it’s important to share that the university administration heavily scrutinized the animation … We were concerned that the exhibition might be cancelled altogether, as the administration cited ‘possible safety issues.’”
Lam said that the changes specifically included “the removal of the word ‘President’ that denoted one of the characters, and the removal … of a poster that stated ‘Free Palestine.’”
Advocates on campus have consistently called attention to repression of pro-Palestine expression at York. In 2024, after a student encampment was set up, the administration called the police, who raided and tore down the encampment a day later.
Lam also said that the administration attempted to “shorten the run of the entire exhibition.”
“I find it hard to believe that these events — Jenifer’s firing and the university administration’s objections to my work — are not related, at least in part,” Lam said.
“The interference from the university administration in our artwork was obfuscated by reference to vague policies — similar to how the firing is being veiled with ambiguous reasons,” she added.
“In the midst of this manufactured confusion, and drawing implications from what’s happened with art institutions in Toronto over the past few years, I have to question if donor influence — specifically the university president’s close relationship with the main donors to the gallery — played a role here.”
The main donors to GGYU are Canadian philanthropists Joan and Martin Goldfarb, who donated $5 million to build the new gallery bearing their name, which opened in 2024. Martin Goldfarb founded a market research and polling firm in the 1960s that sold for $57 million in 1998 and has led other businesses since. Joan Goldfarb has long been involved in the arts, serving in leadership roles on the boards of the McMichael Gallery and the Canadian Federation of Friends of Museums. Joan Goldfarb currently sits on the York gallery’s advisory committee.
The Grind reached out to the Goldfarbs for comment. Speaking by phone, Martin Goldfarb denied any involvement in Papararo’s termination or censorship at the GGYU. “We gave [the gallery] money with no strings attached,” he said. “We have no responsibility for who runs the gallery or who the gallery itself hires. Our donation was given, and that was the end of our involvement other than the name on the building.”
Goldfarb acknowledged that he speaks regularly with President Lenton, but has no knowledge of why Papararo was fired. He also said that he is unaware of any pressures placed on artists. “I don’t even know who Amy Lam is,” he told The Grind.
Faculty demand Papararo be reinstated
In a letter sent on Dec. 17, which The Grind has seen, a group of York faculty raised concerns about “a disquieting trend of York Administration interference in the gallery.”
The letter, signed by 107 faculty and community members, was addressed to the university’s provost, board of directors and incoming president, and demanded the “reinstatement of Curator/Director Jenifer Papararo, and a repudiation of administrative interference in the creative and curatorial programming of the Goldfarb Gallery.”
“Policies should be reviewed and updated as necessary to ensure academic and artistic freedom are protected at the gallery, as they are at the university more broadly,” the letter concluded.
The Grind reached out for additional comment from Lenton, whose time as president ends this month, but a spokesperson responded that “employment matters are confidential.”
“The University has acknowledged with gratitude the many contributions Ms. Papararo made to the (GGYU) through messages to our community, meetings with Gallery staff, and to our external community partners,” Yanni Dagonas, deputy spokesperson for York University, wrote in an email.
Papararo’s contract with the GGYU was scheduled to end in December of 2026. Speaking with The Grind, she confirmed that she signed a release form following her dismissal from the gallery and cannot share details of her termination.
However, she says she is open to returning as director and curator of the gallery, depending on the university’s terms. “I am invested in the artistic program of the gallery and many forthcoming projects,” she says.
Accusations of repression
Papararo’s sudden dismissal “immediately set off alarm bells,” John Greyson, a filmmaker and professor at York, tells The Grind. He adds that the decision felt reminiscent of other forced terminations of curators, such as Wanda Nanibush’s exit from the Art Gallery of Ontario (AGO) in 2023.
The Walrus reported that two or three influential trustees on the AGO’s board had used Nanibush’s pro-Palestine posts “as an excuse to remove her from the museum.”
Greyson, who is among the faculty who signed the letter calling for Papararo to be reinstated, believes that the decision stems from censorship around the subject of Palestine.
“Administration interference in the curation of exhibitions used to be unprecedented — now it’s sadly the new norm, at least for exhibitions that involve the subject of Palestine,” he says. “Goldfarb now joins the list of galleries around the world that have censored works addressing Palestine.”
York University has not responded to The Grind’s questions about allegations of censorship surrounding Lam’s exhibit, nor to a request to see the contract between the gallery’s major donors and the university.
Confusion over donor relationships
Last November, community members pressured the GGYU after it was revealed that one of its programs, At the Transit Bar, was supported by the Outset Contemporary Art Fund, an international arts charity based in the U.K. with chapters around the world, including one in Israel.
Under the banner of “Strike Outset,” organizers called on artists to boycott the GGYU exhibition, accusing Outset of “artwash(ing) Israel’s occupation and genocide of Palestinians by connecting Israeli-state funded arts organizations with international artists.”
Weeks later, in early January 2025, organizers announced that the GGYU “has cut ties with Outset Contemporary Art Fund.”
However, York University denied this, and claimed that organizations protesting the charity were “incorrect” and misrepresented the actions of the administration.
In a statement eventually posted to the GGYU website, the administration wrote: “To be clear, York University, and by extension The Goldfarb Gallery, does not negatively screen partnerships based on nationality, country of origin, or political views.”
On Saturday, Lam told the audience that her book 83% Perfect and the exhibition as a whole “represent some of the mechanisms of repression. Here, now, the artwork and the context have become enmeshed, and mechanisms of repression have affected this exhibition and event.”
Lam’s exhibition runs until January 31, 2026.
With files from David Gray-Donald.
This article appeared in the 2026 Feb/Mar issue.
