Grace Eiko Thomson, member of the MAWA Board in the 1980s, has passed in her ninth decade. Thomson earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from the University of Manitoba and later a Master's degree from the University of Leeds, working under Griselda Pollock. She worked as a curator at Gallery 1.1.1 in Manitoba and the Burnaby Art Gallery in British Columbia, and as an advisor to the Sanavik Inuit Cooperative in Nunavut. In 2000, she became the inaugural Curator and Director of the new Japanese Canadian National Museum, now the Nikkei National Museum and Cultural Centre. She herself was a Japanese Canadian internment camp survivor. In 2021, Thomson published a memoir based on her family's experience, Chiru Sakura: Falling Cherry Blossoms. She died peacefully at home in Winnipeg.