Two high-profile museums—Hong Kong’s M+, a contemporary art museum that opened in 2021 in a building designed by Herzog & de Meuron facing Victoria Harbor, and the Centre Pompidou, Paris’s National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, which closed last year for a long-planned renovation of its Renzo Piano and Richard Rogers building—have announced a five-year partnership, beginning next year.
The plan was announced at M+ on May 15 and reported by the South China Morning Post. Representatives from both institutions were on hand, including M+ director Suhanya Raffel, Pompidou president Laurent Le Bon, and French Consul General Christile Drulhe. The following day, Le Bon and Raffel participated in a keynote lecture at the museum about the Pompidou’s history, plans for the refurbished building, and the nature of the museums’ newly announced collaboration.
Raffel, who was appointed director of M+ in 2016, five years before the museum opened, noted that her team looked up to the Pompidou while they were building their own institution and collection. “It is remarkable for us to be able to say, ‘yes, we are now working with a museum mentor for M+, but as also, I hope, an equal partner,’” she told the SCMP.
The two institutions plan to lend artworks for exhibitions, collaborate on research and new commissions, and support exchanges among curators and other museum professionals. Starting in 2027, M+ and the Pompidou will co-organize a series of exhibitions that will be on view at the Hong Kong museum, featuring artworks from both collections; a four-year postdoctoral appointment for a research fellow focusing on 20th- and 21st-century Western and Asian art is also part of the partnership.
The museums’ collaboration culminates in major exhibition that will first be on view at the Pompidou when it reopens in 2029 or 2030, before traveling to M+. The show will focus on “the diversity and richness of visual culture in France and Greater China, and the new dialogues they create in a rapidly changing world,” according to a statement from M+.
