The Museum is pleased to announce the acquisition of six works of art by Takao Tanabe (b.1926), generously donated by the artist. All were on display as part of the Takao Tanabe: Chronicles of Form and Place exhibition, presented in 2012 at the McMaster Museum of Art and at the Burnaby Art Gallery.

During World War II, Tanabe and his family were among the many Japanese Canadians relocated to internment camps in BC’s interior. After two years, Tanabe transferred to a prison farm in Manitoba where he had his first experiences with the Prairie landscape. When the war ended, Tanabe attended the Winnipeg School of Art.

For more than 60 years, the celebrated Canadian artist has circumscribed the subject of the landscape, through abstraction, to realism, and back again.

Now exhibited and collected internationally, Takao Tanabe is also the recipient of many distinctions including honorary doctorate degrees from the University of Lethbridge and Emily Carr University of Art and Design. He was named to both the Order of British Columbia and Order of Canada, and in 2003 was selected for the Governor General’s Award in the Visual and Media Arts.