The Audain Art Museum in Whistler, British Columbia, is celebrating the 100th birthday of Takao Tanabe with a landmark retrospective titled Takao Tanabe 100: Inside Passage. Opening on June 13, 2026, the exhibition honors one of Canada's most distinguished painters and his immeasurable contributions to Canadian art.
Exhibition Highlights
Featuring more than fifty works spanning six decades, the retrospective offers a comprehensive overview of Tanabe's evolving visual language. Alongside his iconic coastal and prairie landscapes, the exhibition showcases lesser-known bodies of work, including the White Paintings, Emperor paintings, hard-edge paintings, and intimate river scenes. These pieces provide a deeper understanding of Tanabe's creative range, from modernist abstraction to serene coastal skies.
Artistic Legacy
Tanabe has received some of Canada's highest honors, including the Governor General's Award, the Order of Canada, the Order of British Columbia, and the Audain Prize for the Visual Arts. He was instrumental in establishing the Governor General's Awards in Visual and Media Arts in 2000 and the Audain Prize in 2004.
Michael Audain, founder of the Audain Art Museum, remarked: “While I first acquired one of Tak's prairie paintings in the early 70s, my appreciation for his distinctive style, especially his misty gray coastal paintings, continued to deepen over the years.”
Curatorial Team
The exhibition is curated by Kiriko Watanabe, Gail & Stephen A. Jarislowsky Chief Curator at the Audain Art Museum; Jonathan Shaughnessy, Director, Curatorial Initiatives, Interim Senior Curator Contemporary Art at the National Gallery of Canada; and Steven McNeil, former Chief Curator and Director of Exhibitions at the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria.
Tour Dates and Venues
Co-organized by the Audain Art Museum, the National Gallery of Canada, and the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, the retrospective will travel to three venues:
- Audain Art Museum, Whistler: June 13 to October 19, 2026
- National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa: November 27, 2026 to April 18, 2027
- Art Gallery of Greater Victoria, Victoria: May 29 to October 10, 2027
Curtis Collins, Executive Director of the Audain Art Museum, stated: “This exceptional exhibition invites visitors to celebrate Takao Tanabe's centennial, reflecting on his enduring legacy and the quiet power and poetic refinement that define such an extraordinary body of work.”
