Explore our Museum after hours with Pay-What-You-Can admission every Thursday evening!

Be it date-night, an evening of family fun, or your own cultural excursion, step into our galleries and let curiosity be your guide as the stories of North Vancouver come to life under a whole new light

Thursdays, Weekly
Time: 5PM –8PM
Audience: All Ages
Pay-What-You-Can

All drop-ins welcome!

A new sculpture by James Harry marks The Polygon Gallery’s seventh collaboration and co-commission with Burrard Arts Foundation. Eye of the Ancestor is a striking yellow cedar wooden sphere, carved with Coast Salish designs on the surface and holding a mirror-polished stainless steel sphere inside. The composition creates layered reflections and viewpoints that shift with the viewer’s movements around the sculpture. The title of the work draws from Coast Salish visual language, where the eye is a form associated with awareness, presence, and continuity beyond the individual. Harry’s sculpture translates that form into a multiscalar design that enacts a subtle intergenerational choreography, reflecting Indigenous pedagogies wherein knowledge is relational, accumulative, and often revealed incrementally across the arc of one’s life.

Simranpreet Anand’s latest body of work weighs the spiritual significance of sacred materials against the costs and modes of their mass production. Working from a Sikh perspective, her installation of ceremonial fabrics, lenticular prints, and embroidered photographs considers the notion of the “eternal” in terms of religious significance, as well as the synthetic nature of products manufactured to last forever. Collapsing commercial and domestic spaces, her exhibition at The Polygon Gallery will feature a living room — with custom wallpaper, a couch, and a television — beside the Gallery’s gift shop, probing multivalent ideas of worship, value, and sustainability in the 21st century. Anand was the winner of the 2023 Philip B. Lind Emerging Artist Prize.

Items explores the notion of value around objects commonly seen as valueless. Visual artist, Adrian Duchateau collects useless and meaningless items to reconfigure their value by forcing them to withstand a pristine aesthetic canvas. These images aim to build a poetic or fantastic narrative around the objects to convey different feelings and/or stories for the spectator, thus increasing the appreciative value of such meaningless objects. Duchateau’s photographic exercise requires some sculptural and installation work that only exists through photography, as these objects can only be appreciated because they exist through the photographic medium.

Every day consumption is surrounded by disposable items which become trash once their one-time instant use is fulfilled. These items are a burden for the planet and its invaluable resources due to their mass production and immediate disposal. Single-use objects are deemed meaningless due to their single-use nature, but their existence and overly common use are a statement of society’s unsustainable consumption, which disregards the impact on (and the needs of) the ecosystem that sustains all life.

Items seeks to be an evaluation of what can be appreciated as valuable. If meaningless objects or discarded trash can become an aesthetic experience, then there can be a shift in our perspective about what we cherish. This possibility extends to our capability for cultural change that can modify the established consumption order that has our world on the brink of irreversible damage.

ShongRokkhon: Reimagined Threads presents a series of textile-based artworks that investigate how inherited South Asian textile practices can be reshaped and sustained through displacement. Each work begins with preloved fabrics, often garments worn by elders, that carry embedded histories of care, memory, and intimacy. Onto these surfaces, the artist layers paint, dye, beadwork, stitching, and block stamping. By adapting Bangladeshi methods with improvised tools and limited resources, the work reveals how craft traditions persist even when uprooted from their original cultural and material contexts.

Takao Tanabe’s fascination with landscapes comes vividly to life through his travels across British Columbia, North America, the Arctic, and Europe. With his camera always at hand, he journeyed widely to explore the wonders of places that sparked his curiosity and creative drive. Tanabe captured their geographical features and unique atmosphere, translating them into paintings in his studio that balance careful observation with poetic reflection. His works invite quiet contemplation, as if he listens intently to the land itself.

Machu Picchu (1990-2012) is a look back on Tanabe’s journey there in 1977. Each brushstroke, layer of colour, and element of composition evokes the memories and spirit of the place, which Tanabe revisited in his mind while working on the painting. He returned to it in 2012, completing it to his satisfaction at that time.

In Suffolk Village (1996–97) and Peninsula, N.L. (2014), Tanabe demonstrates precise attention to form, colour, and space. Suffolk Village depicts a historical coastal town under dramatic skies, while Peninsula, N.L., pares the landscape to sky, land, and sea, emphasizing its clarity. In contrast, Arctic and northern interior landscapes such as High Arctic 2/91, Aston Bay, Somerset Is. (1991) and Chilcotin 1/89, Frozen Lake (1989) use diffused light, soft contours, and muted greys and blues to evoke solitude, introspection, and the emotional resonance of extreme environments.

One of the highlights of this exhibition is a triptych, N.W.T.1/97: Beaulieu River (1997), donated by the artist to the Audain Art Museum in 2018. This large-scale river painting has a quiet intensity, offering the viewer an immersive engagement with nature, while capturing Canada’s breathtaking scenery.

Across continents, oceans, and lands, Tanabe’s travel paintings in this exhibition reveal both the poetic essence of the world and its quiet, meditative spirit, offering a deeply contemplative vision of place.

In partnership with Sḵwx̱wú7mesh Úxwumixw (Squamish Nation) through the Ta na wa Ns7éyx̱nitmta Snew̓íyelh (Language & Cultural Affairs Department), MONOVA is proud to present Gifts to be Shared, Protected, and Carried Forward, a new exhibition celebrating Sḵwx̱wú7mesh history, artistry, and living cultural practices.

Through Coast Salish storytelling, weaving traditions, and cultural belongings, the exhibition creates a living connection between past, present, and future while offering visitors a deeper understanding of place rooted in Sḵwx̱wú7mesh history.

The exhibition brings together rare pieces from Chief Dr. Janice George’s personal collection of weavings and cultural belongings alongside significant loans and community-held pieces connected to Sḵwx̱wú7mesh history and teachings, including a canoe, woven works, and Chief Joe Capilano’s belt.

 Photo: monova.ca

Celebrating Takao Tanabe’s extraordinary contributions to Canadian art, this retrospective marks his 100th birthday on September 16, 2026, and features over sixty paintings spanning more than seven decades. It offers a comprehensive look at his evolving visual language and the remarkable breadth of Tanabe’s artistic practice.

Born in 1926 in Seal Cove, Prince Rupert, British Columbia, Tanabe is a second-generation Japanese Canadian whose work has profoundly shaped the landscape of Canadian art. Renowned for his abstract and representational landscapes, he distills the essence of place through masterful control of form, colour, and brushwork. Across his oeuvre, familiar terrains and coastal scenes are transformed into luminous compositions that balance serenity with energy, reflecting a deep, contemplative engagement with land and water.

Alongside iconic coastal and prairie landscapes, Takao Tanabe: Inside Passage showcases lesser-known bodies of work, including the Emperor series, hard-edge paintings, and intimate river scenes, providing a more comprehensive appreciation of Tanabe’s creative range. Each canvas, whether modernist abstraction or tranquil coastal sky, demonstrates his lifelong pursuit of visual and emotional resonance in shape and nature.

Tanabe’s influence extends beyond his technical mastery, merging Eastern and Western traditions with the modernist movements of postwar Canada. His contributions have been recognized with numerous honours, including the Governor General’s Award in Visual and Media Arts, the Order of Canada, and the Audain Prize for the Visual Arts. This exhibition invites visitors to celebrate Takao Tanabe’s centennial, reflect on his enduring legacy, and experience the quiet power and poetic refinement that define his remarkable body of work.

Presented in Inside Passage is Tanabe’s extraordinary ability to capture a visual expression of emotion through abstraction, as well as the essence of picturesque places. From tranquil rivers and mountains to dramatic coastal vistas, his work evokes both stillness and grandeur, offering a poetic reflection on nature and a lasting testament to his artistic legacy.

Animals play important roles in Sk̲wx̲wú7mesh Úxwumixw and Líl̓wat7úl cultures-we honour them in many ways. We wear their hides as clothing, feature them in artwork, and they’re the central character in our stories, songs and dances. They’re important educational tools, sharing history, morals and values with our children.

In the Squamish Legend known as Ta X̱aays (the transformers) after light was created and then land was created, the first animal(s) to be created were all that can fly, and next to be created were all that can run on four legs, and the next that was created were all that can crawl & swim and the last to be created were the Human beings. So being the last to have been created makes the humans the sḵa7ḵ (younger sibling) and everyone else the kwepkwúpits (older siblings).

In the Lil’wat Legend known as How the Animals and Birds Got Their Names, told by Nts’elasq’et, or “s7á7a7” Crow in his early years, late Elder Charlie Mack, during the Great Flood all of the animals and birds died waiting to find dry land. The Kúkwpi7 (the Chief) called all of the people to a special gathering. At the meeting, they were asked to sing their songs, for whatever power they had. Everyone sang. One by one, they all made the sounds of different animals and birds and then turned into them. Animals, birds, people and land are one and the same.

This exhibit features artwork from Sk̲wx̲wú7mesh Úxwumixw and Líl̓wat7úl youth created as they learn more about their own culture. Jazmine (Ts̓qáxa7) Andrew, Hayden Sampson, Nakeisha Williams, Melody Bruce Joseph, Qawam Redmond Andrews, T. Ben Lewis, Leanne Bird Lewis, Matthew Cole, the Project Based Learning Class St’a7mes School – Learning Expeditions, and the Yéw’Yew Classroom St’a7mes School – Learning Expeditions..

Join us as we explore the roles animals play in our songs and dances.

Kaur’s practice unfolds within the lived realities of the South Asian diaspora, where culture is shaped by movement, memory, and re-telling. Working across painting, sculpture, digital media, embroidery, poetry, and performance, Kaur draws from Sikh and broader Indic poetic traditions—ways of thinking and making in which metaphor and image are used to hold ways of living and understanding. Within Sikh culture, such imagery has long offered guidance: poetic forms and natural elements are used to reflect on humility, devotion, balance, and relational responsibility.

If Gardens Could Dream brings together a recurring set of forms that appear across materials and scales. Rather than functioning as fixed symbols, these motifs shift and gather meaning through repetition and change, offering points of reflection rather than instruction. The moon gestures toward cycles of time, discipline, and return, echoing Sikh understandings of attunement to larger rhythms beyond the self. The heart appears as both a bodily organ and a site of feeling and devotion, foregrounding sincerity and inner alignment. The pomegranate, dense with seeds, speaks to abundance and interconnection, resonating with communal values and diasporic networks of care. The lotus, rising from muddy water, reflects principles of humility and steadfastness—remaining grounded while moving through worldly conditions.

Kaur’s interdisciplinary approach emphasizes translation—between mediums, histories, and ways of knowing. As forms move from textile to image, from language to performance, they reveal how cultural memory survives not through preservation alone, but through adaptation and care. Tradition, here, is not static; it is responsive and alive.

If Gardens Could Dream invites viewers into a contemplative space where personal experience and collective history meet. The exhibition offers symbols as open gestures—capable of holding loss and continuity, intimacy and inheritance—and proposes cultural meaning as something continually nurtured, like a garden shaped by time, tending, and return.

BAG Offsite presents Michael de Courcy: one in a million, an exhibition spanning across both Bob Prittie Library and McGill library sites.

This year marks the 40th anniversary of Expo 86, the 1986 World Exposition on Transportation and Communication, an event that attracted over 22 million visitors from around the world.

Artist Michael de Courcy made a point of attending each day of the event, with the intent of documenting family groups, friends and individuals parading along the Expo thoroughfares absorbed in the moment. The result of this undertaking, the one in a million archive, contains 1700 images of an incredibly diverse group of people, a collective snapshot of a time when Vancouver and the region was emergent on the world stage, and undergoing growing pains.

BAG Offsite presents Michael de Courcy: one in a million, an exhibition spanning across both Bob Prittie Library and McGill library sites.

This year marks the 40th anniversary of Expo 86, the 1986 World Exposition on Transportation and Communication, an event that attracted over 22 million visitors from around the world.

Artist Michael de Courcy made a point of attending each day of the event, with the intent of documenting family groups, friends and individuals parading along the Expo thoroughfares absorbed in the moment. The result of this undertaking, the one in a million archive, contains 1700 images of an incredibly diverse group of people, a collective snapshot of a time when Vancouver and the region was emergent on the world stage, and undergoing growing pains.

Acclaimed Canadian photographer Greg Girard receives his first-ever career retrospective this summer. Girard began his career as a photojournalist before developing an artistic focus on the social and physical transformations of urban centres, especially in Asia. He was based in Shanghai between 1998 and 2011, and is renowned for his images of that city’s rapid, and at times violent, metamorphosis through the beginning of the 21st century. Girard has also produced a number of award winning photobooks, including Phantom Shanghai (2007), which The Independent newspaper cited as one the top 10 photographic books ever produced, as well as Under Vancouver, 1972 – 82 (2017), which is now in its fourth printing. His photographs have appeared in National Geographic Magazine, New York Times Magazine, Time, Fortune, Sunday Times Magazine (UK) and many more.

Settle into an unforgettable mountaintop art studio and immerse yourself in alpine magic with the Plein Air Painting Adventure! Co-presented by Arts Whistler and Whistler Blackcomb, your artistic journey begins with a scenic gondola ride and high-alpine hike leading you to an exclusive setup at the iconic Harmony Ridge Inuksuk. Led by a professional local artist, you’ll be treated to panoramic mountain vistas as you paint outside in the elements. All professional supplies—including easels, canvases, brushes, and acrylics—are provided. Wrap up your creative excursion back at the Roundhouse Lodge with a complimentary beverage on the sunny Steeps patio! (Note: Workshop requires a separate Whistler Blackcomb sightseeing lift ticket).

Art does not just occupy space; it alters it. Every voice shared is a line drawn that can never be un-drawn.

The intention of Indelible Mark is to illuminate queer identity not as a modern or transient phenomenon, but as a fixed truth: a fundamental, unyielding constant throughout history. In this exhibition, every act of creation is an act of permanence, reclaiming “mark-making” from the ephemeral and repositioning it as an eternal declaration.

This collection brings together artists whose work functions as a physical and metaphorical record of existence. Here, resilience is viewed as more than a survival tactic; it is a tangible, creative output. Through the marking of the canvas and the saturation of the medium, these works serve as visual metaphors for a community that has weathered systemic storms to emerge with its colors and spirit intact. Ultimately, resilience is about more than just “getting through”—it is about the defiant, unerasable beauty of what is left behind.

While perspective is inherently individual, these gathered works create a harmony of many voices speaking at once. By bringing these diverse perspectives to light, we transform private moments into an indelible record. We are not just displaying art; we are honoring the depth and diversity of the journey.

Through the lenses of Shared Voices, Resilience, and Perspective, these artists utilize the materiality of their craft to remind us that our histories are not written in pencil. The mark is a witness to the struggle, a map of the journey, and a monument to the beauty. We invite you to move past the surface and recognize that these perspectives are not merely additions to our world—they are foundational to it.

The title marks a shift from Kaur’s painting Symbol Harvester, where the term functions as a noun and an active verb, emphasizing movement and transformation. From a central, blue-hued figure, green vegetation grows from the character’s hands, unfurling into living vines that bear evolving symbols. These forms suggest an inner world, seeds of imagination producing symbolic fruit that functions as a visual language. Translating imagery from a three-foot-wide acrylic painting with hand embroidery and beading, the work reflects on farming and harvesting as practices of care and gathering.

Exhibition begins 30 minutes after sunset and ends at midnight.

Photo credit: surrey.ca

Jeff Wall: Inside presents a selection of the artist’s work over the past 30 years, with the emphasis on pictures made in the past decade and not previously seen in Vancouver.
Wall has stated that, from the outset, he wanted to have the same artistic freedom as painters, poets, or composers, the freedom to find what he calls “starting points“ anywhere—in things he witnessed, heard about, read about, or imagined.
The interiors are varied, from private rooms to busy public spaces, from present time to imaginary past moments, giving a sense of the artist’s wide-ranging fascinations.
The often-large size of the works emphasizes the visual impact of composition, colour, and form as well as the intimacy of seeming to share space with the subjects.
The pictures invite both contemplation and discussion, blending composition and artifice with the complex character of the different subjects—the approach that Wall has elaborated over his almost five-decade long career.

The Ferry Building Gallery is delighted to present Tam Irving’s Dimensions, an exhibition of work sitting at the intersection of colour, form, and perception—where the boundaries between painting, object, and optical experience begin to dissolve.

Long recognized as a master potter, Irving turns here to a broader visual language, extending his practice beyond function and into a sustained inquiry into the relationship between art and craft.

At the heart of the exhibition is a rigorous exploration of colour: its capacity to create tension or harmony, to advance or recede, to unsettle or resolve. Drawing on the legacy of colour field painters such as Mark Rothko and Barnett Newman, Irving examines how subtle shifts in hue and contrast can produce spatial effects.

This investigation is paired with an equally probing study of form. Circles are cut, folded, layered, and interrupted; vessels are reimagined and surfaces deceive. Objects that appear flat reveal themselves as dimensional, while others hover ambiguously between two and three dimensions. Irving approaches these transformations with the precision of a scientist, dissecting and reconstructing shapes to test their limits. The result is a playful yet exacting visual language, where perception itself becomes unstable.

The work draws from early 20th-century abstraction, particularly the structural clarity of Lyubov Popova and the Constructivist ethos of building compositions through colour and line. Echoes of Kazimir Malevich’s Suprematism and the spiritual minimalism of Hilma af Klint surface in Irving’s restrained yet deliberate use of form and palette. There are also resonances with the quiet, contemplative grids of Agnes Martin and the gestural freedom of Jackson Pollock, though Irving’s work remains distinctly his own, grounded in materiality and objecthood.

Tam Irving is the featured artist for the 2026 Harmony Arts Festival.