WHISTLER, BC.- Marking the 100th birthday of Takao Tanabe on September 16, 2026, the Audain Art Museum is opening Takao Tanabe 100: Inside Passage, a landmark retrospective honouring one of Canada’s most distinguished painters for his immeasurable contributions to Canadian art. Presented as part of the Museum’s 10-year anniversary programming, this exhibition features more than fifty works spanning six decades, offering a comprehensive overview of Tanabe’s evolving visual language and his remarkable artistic career.

Alongside his iconic coastal and prairie landscapes, Takao Tanabe 100: Inside Passage showcases lesser-known bodies of work, including the “White Paintings” and “Emperor” paintings, hard-edge paintings, and intimate river scenes, which provide a deeper understanding of Tanabe’s creative range. From modernist abstraction to serene coastal skies, each work reflects the artist’s lifelong pursuit of visual clarity and emotional resonance through landscape, form, and colour.

“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, alongside my admiration for his significant contributions to the promotion of visual arts across Canada,” says Michael Audain, Audain Art Museum Founder. In fact, Tanabe was instrumental in the establishment of the Governor General’s Awards in Visual and Media Arts in 2000 and the Audain Prize for the Visual Arts in 2004. Tanabe himself has received some of the nation’s highest honours for artistic achievement, including the Governor General’s Award, the Order of Canada, the Order of British Columbia, and the Audain Prize for the Visual Arts.

“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 extraordinary body of work,” says Curtis Collins, Executive Director of the Audain Art Museum. “It is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to experience a major survey of Tanabe’s practice.”





Takao Tanabe 100: Inside Passage is curated by Kiriko Watanabe, Gail & Stephen A. Jarislowsky Chief Curator, Audain Art Museum; Jonathan Shaughnessy, Director, Curatorial Initiatives, Interim Senior Curator Contemporary Art, National Gallery of Canada; and Steven McNeil, former Chief Curator and Director of Exhibitions, Art Gallery of Greater Victoria.

Co-organized by the Audain Art Museum in Whistler, British Columbia; the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa, Ontario; and the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria in Victoria, British Columbia, Takao Tanabe 100: Inside Passage will be on view at the Audain Art Museum’s Tom & Teresa Gautreau Galleries from June 13 to October 19, 2026; at the National Gallery of Canada from November 27, 2026 to April 18, 2027; and at the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria from May 29 to October 10, 2027.

This exhibition is made possible with thanks to Major Supporters The Audain Foundation and the National Gallery of Canada Foundation; Major Sponsor RBC Wealth Management; Supporting Sponsor Heffel; Government Partner Resort Municipality of Whistler; Hotel Partner Fairmont Chateau Whistler; Generously Supported By Hopes & Dreams Foundation; and Catalogue Partners Equinox Gallery, Heffel, Madrona Gallery, and Mira Godard Gallery.

Born in 1926 in Seal Cove, Prince Rupert, British Columbia, Takao Tanabe is a second-generation Japanese Canadian whose work has played a defining role in Canadian art. Renowned for both his abstract and representational landscapes, he distills the essence of place through precise control of form, colour, and brushwork. Among his oeuvre, familiar terrains and coastal scenes are transformed into luminous compositions that balance stillness and energy, reflecting a deeply contemplative engagement with land, sea, and sky.