Asian Heritage Month 2026 at the Vancouver Art Gallery

Asian Heritage Month 2026 at the Vancouver Art Gallery

Asian Heritage Month 2026 at the Vancouver Art Gallery

The Gallery Hosts a Month of Talks, Tours and Workshops Celebrating Asian Art and Ideas, Looking Ahead to a Landmark Exhibition on Iranian Modernism

May 1, 2026, VANCOUVER, BC // Traditional Coast Salish Lands including the xʷməθkʷəy̓əm (Musqueam), Sḵwx̱wú7mesh (Squamish) and səlilwətaɬ (Tsleil-Waututh) Nations.

In honour of Asian Heritage Month, the Vancouver Art Gallery presents a dynamic program of talks, tours and workshops that spotlight the depth, richness and ongoing influence of Asian art and cultural expression across time and place.

Throughout May, audiences are invited to engage with the Gallery’s collection and exhibitions through a series of dedicated events. Weekly Lunchtime Look tours offer fresh perspectives from experts across the Gallery, with highlights including a focused tour on Asian art led by Senior Curator Diana Freundl, and a Mandarin-language tour guided by Public Programs Coordinator Lynn Chen, opening up new ways of connecting with the Gallery’s latest exhibition, Highlights from the Collection.

The program continues with Modernity in Translation: Art, Architecture and Poetry in Iran, a thought-provoking panel moderated by curator Pantea Haghighi. Bringing together renowned architect Hossein Amanat and Dr. Jeff Derksen, Professor at Simon Fraser University, the conversation explores how tradition and modernity intersect in Iranian culture, inviting audiences to reconsider modernity as an ongoing process of cultural translation and exchange.

For those looking to get creative, on May 31 artist Vanessa Lam leads a special edition of The Making Place: Freedom of Expressive Collage and Drawing, a hands-on workshop that encourages participants to experiment with intuitive mark-making, painting and collage. Designed for all experience levels, the session fosters creativity, confidence and playful exploration. In the Gallery Lobby, families can discover a special tissue paper landscapes activity, inspired by the work of Takao Tanabe and Lui Shou-Kwan in Highlights from the Collection.

“We are proud to mark Asian Heritage Month through the work of the Centre for Global Asias as a platform that is attuned to the present. Our exhibitions, conversations, tours and workshops open up spaces for critical reflection and exchange,” says Sirish Rao, Interim Co-CEO of the Vancouver Art Gallery and Director of the Centre for Global Asias. “At a time when Asia is central to so many of the world’s cultural, political and geopolitical currents, this work recognizes the many Asias that exist (across regions, diasporas and futures yet to be imagined). We invite audiences to move between languages, contexts and lived realities to understand how local and global Asian communities shape our world today.”

May’s panel discussion also offers a preview of one of the Gallery’s most significant forthcoming exhibitions, Modern Iran and the Avant-Gardes, 1948–78. Opening December 11, 2026, this landmark exhibition—guest curated by Pantea Haghighi—is the largest presentation of Iranian modernism ever mounted in Canada. Bringing together more than 30 artists and approximately 100 works across painting, sculpture, drawing and architecture, the exhibition explores how complex cultural tensions of this period led to artistic innovation.

Modern Iran and the Avant-Gardes, 1948–78 also foregrounds the contributions of women artists, several of whom have been overlooked by major surveys of the period until now, and traces how many artists continued their practices in exile following the seismic shifts of the 1970s. Together, the exhibition offers an unprecedented view of a transformative period in Iran’s cultural history, when artists developed a distinctly Iranian modernism shaped by the interplay of tradition and innovation.

“Presenting Modern Iran and the Avant-Gardes, 1948–78 is part of our commitment to broaden the story of modern art across geographies,” says Eva Respini, Interim Co-CEO and Curator at Large at the Vancouver Art Gallery. “The exhibition invites audiences into a pivotal moment of cultural transformation in Iran, where tradition and transformation meet and where modern art emerges not as a fixed idea, but as something that continues to be shaped.”

Modern Iran and the Avant-Gardes, 1948–78 is organized by the Vancouver Art Gallery and guest curated by Pantea Haghighi. The exhibition will open on December 11, 2026, and runs until May 2, 2027.