Audain Art Museum

Exhibitions

The museum displays several temporary exhibitions throughout the year, creating an ever-changing display to delight locals and visitors alike. Including both historical and contemporary art, they produce their own exhibitions and showcase art from leading art institutions around the world to complement their permanent collection.

Current Exhibitions

Vistas: From Takao Tanabe’s Travels

Date: May 16 – September 21, 2026
Description: Takao Tanabe’s lifelong engagement with landscape was shaped by travels across British Columbia, the Arctic, North America and Europe. Working from photographs and memory, he transformed observed places into distilled, meditative paintings that balance precision with restraint. Works such as Machu Picchu (1990 – 2012) reflect his habit of revisiting sites over time, refining them in the studio. From the structured coastal view of Suffolk Village to the pared-back clarity of Peninsula, N.L. and the muted expanses of his Arctic scenes, Tanabe reduced land, sky and water to their essential relationships. The triptych N.W.T.1/97: Beaulieu River underscores his quiet, immersive vision of place.

Upcoming Special Exhibitions

Takao Tanabe: Inside Passage

Date: June 13 – October 19, 2026
Description: Celebrating Takao Tanabe’s extraordinary impact on Canadian art, this retrospective marks his 100th birthday on September 16, 2026, and brings together more than sixty paintings spanning seven decades. Born in 1926 in Seal Cove, Prince Rupert, Tanabe shaped the language of landscape painting in Canada through both abstraction and representation. From iconic coastal and prairie scenes to lesser-known hard-edge works and the Emperor series, the exhibition reveals the full breadth of his practice. Guided by disciplined form, subtle colour and a synthesis of Eastern and Western traditions, Tanabe’s paintings distill place into meditative, resonant compositions of enduring clarity and depth.

Permanent Collection

The Museum contains a permanent collection of the province’s most celebrated artists. Highlights include hereditary Haida Chief James Hart’s The Dance Screen (The Scream Too), an exceptional collection of historical and contemporary Indigenous masks, the largest permanent display of paintings by Emily Carr, and key examples of the Vancouver photo conceptualism movement.

The most recent acquisition of an exceptional historical watercolour painting by Emily Carr, War Canoes, Alert Bay, circa 1908, was unveiled alongside the iconic oil on canvas from the Museum’s Permanent Collection of the same name. This signifies an extraordinary reunion of two closely-related Carr masterworks, more than one hundred years after they were painted. The collection also includes The Crazy Stair, a painting by Emily Carr which sold at auction for a record-breaking $3.3 million. This price was the highest ever paid for an Emily Carr at auction, the highest for a work by a Canadian female artist and the fourth most expensive work at an art auction in Canada.

Admission

Adult: $22
Senior: $19
Young Adult (19 to 25): $15
Youth & Children (18 and under): Free
Members: Free

Tickets for Audain Art Museum can be purchased at www.audainartmuseum.com.

When to Visit

Gift Shop

The Audain Art Museum Shop features a wide selection of handmade jewellery, pottery, wood work and homeware from British Columbia artists, as well as artist prints and collector books from the Audain's permanent collection and temporary exhibits.

Where is the Audain Art Museum?

The Audain Art Museum is located at 4350 Blackcomb Way. Parking is available in the day lots.

View Map of Audain Art Museum

The accessible features listed above have been self-identified by the individual business or operator. For specific questions, or assistance with booking, please contact one of our Whistler-based Travel Consultants directly at 1.800.944.7853, or via email at reservations@whistler.com.