Asian Comics Exhibition at Chinese Canadian Museum
Asian Comics: Evolution of an Art Form opened at the Chinese Canadian Museum on October 7, 2026, and like any good long-running series, it reached Vancouver with a bonus chapter no other city got. Developed by London's Barbican Centre, the show has been touring since 2017, most recently at Seattle's Museum of Pop Culture, and its Canadian premiere runs until August 15, 2027.
What is in the show
Every series needs an origin story, and this one starts with pages from Hokusai's Hokusai Manga, published in 1814, then runs through 19th-century woodblock prints by Utagawa Kuniyoshi, Hindu scroll paintings and original Astro Boy animation cels by Osamu Tezuka. With more than 400 works from over 20 countries and regions, it is less a single issue than the complete collected edition.
Comics historian Paul Gravett curated it with more than 20 international advisors, and the seven sections read like a table of contents: Mapping Asian Comics, Fables and Folklore, Recreating and Revisiting the Past, Stories and Storytellers, Censorship and Sensibility, Multimedia Asian Comics and Diaspora Stories. Censorship and Sensibility is what happens when Jane Austen gets a speech bubble and a strict editor.
The show also includes the work of Vannak Anan Prum, a formerly enslaved fisherman who used comics to tell his own story.
The Vancouver addition
That bonus chapter is Diaspora Stories, curated for Vancouver by Olivia Chow, the museum's Director of Curatorial Programs. It brings in Chinese Canadian creators including David H. T. Wong, Zoe Si, Lee Lai, Ruth Chan and Hartley Lin, along with archival comics by Vivian Chan Moy from The Asianadian, published from 1978 to 1985. Seattle got the standard edition. Vancouver got the one collectors argue about.
Plan your visit
The show is on the second floor of the museum at 51 E Pender St, open Wednesday to Sunday from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. The run ends August 15, 2027, a deadline generous enough to postpone and short enough to regret. Bring a date who reads the whole series, not just the covers.
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