Takao Tanabe: Life & Work

Born in 1926 in the fishing community of Seal Cove, British Columbia, in 1937 Takao Tanabe moved with his parents and six siblings to Vancouver. His life was uprooted in 1942, when he and his family, among the 22,000 Japanese Canadians dispossessed and displaced by the government during the Second World War, were sent to an internment camp in the interior of B.C. Despite this challenging early life, Tanabe went on to forge a career that has changed the way we see and understand this country and its landscapes.

Ian Thom is an author and art historian who spent more than thirty years as a curator at the Vancouver Art Gallery (VAG). At the VAG and other institutions he organized more than one hundred exhibitions on Canadian and international art. He is the author of books and catalogues on David Milne (1992), Takao Tanabe (2005), and Gordon Smith (2014), among others. In 2008 he was appointed to the Order of Canada for his contributions to Canadian art.