The museum by the sea: how Hong Kong’s M+ is centring Asian visual culture

It’s a winter’s morning, and Suhanya Raffel and I are gazing out of the wide picture window at M+, museum of contemporary visual culture in Hong Kong. We’re watching two young, bundled-up women taking selfies on the West Kowloon Cultural District (WestK) waterfront. Behind them, the waves of Victoria Harbour and the skyline of Hong Kong Island glint in the cold light.

This is a quiet moment ahead of Hong Kong Arts Month, an exhilarating, frantic period of exhibition openings, live auctions, talks and parties scattered throughout the city. This event has taken place each March since 2013, coinciding with the launch of Art Basel Hong Kong in the city. Preparations are underway at M+, where a special Picasso exhibition , including a large-scale sand installation, will form a cornerstone of the museum’s programming.

M+ has been open for three-and-a-half-years; Sri Lankan-born Australian Raffel has been director of the museum for nearly nine. During this period, she not only guided the museum to its launch but saw art’s profile rise sharply, with tentpole events like Arts Month becoming a “global movement” that draws an international gaze to Hong Kong. “I’ve watched how culture has become more important to the city,” Raffel says. “It’s extraordinary to see how the private and public sectors come together in March to make arts and culture a central part of people’s experience.”

This month, museum directors, gallerists, curators and collectors from around the world will descend upon the art venues of Hong Kong, joined by homegrown artists and aficionados. “The interregional discussions, exchanges, commissioning of artists’ work – all of that is now established, and it’s fantastic that it coheres over Arts Month in Hong Kong,” she adds. “This is when we really understand how Hong Kong is the cultural hub for Asia.” 

M+, two decades in the making, provided much-needed cultural cachet for the city upon its 2021 opening. In an industry historically focused on the West, M+ has a critical role to play not only within Hong Kong’s arts ecosystem but also as an amplifier for Asian art. Its imposing rectangular building sits on a 40-hectare reclaimed peninsula that also houses more than a dozen other cultural venues that form WestK, including the Hong Kong Palace Museum, home to Chinese antiquities; the Freespace performance venue; and the Xiqu Centre for Chinese opera. Last year, Cathay began a three-year partnership with the district to foster Hong Kong art and culture by transporting artwork, flying artists and promoting exhibitions to Cathay members globally.

“When the West Kowloon Cultural District was set up, Hong Kong was missing the big public arts institutions,” Raffel says. “As the first global museum of visual culture in Asia, M+’s mandate is to bring the best of design, architecture, art and moving image from Hong Kong, Greater China and wider Asia to the fore. Our vision is to expand and decentre the canon.” 

Since 2013, M+ has collaborated with the Hong Kong Arts Development Council on the city’s exhibition at the Venice Biennale, raising the profile of Hong Kong artists. Cave of Avoidance (Not Yours), an installation of fishless aquariums and one of the artworks from the Trevor Yeung: Courtyard of Attachments, Hong Kong in Venice exhibition that premiered at the festival in 2024, will be staged at M+ in June. Additionally, the museum recognises artistic achievement in Greater China with its yearly Sigg Prize, whose recipients have included Hong Kong sonic artist Samson Young and Chinese multidisciplinarian Wang Tuo. “One of our core missions is to expand the thinking about work from this region,” Raffel says. “We are not a footnote; we are the main story.”

Raffel plans to build the museum’s connections to Europe, Latin America and other parts of the world. One such “interregional conversation” is M+’s current exhibition co-organised with the Musée National Picasso-Paris, with Cathay as its major sponsor.

The Hong Kong Jockey Club Series: Picasso for Asia—A Conversation juxtaposes key pieces by the Spanish artist with works from Asia and its diaspora. It’s accompanied by Lee Mingwei’s Guernica in Sand (2006–present), which recreates Picasso’s Guernica (1937). Rendered in coloured sand, Lee’s installation will eventually be swept away by performers, evoking ideas of impermanence and transformation.

“It’s an incredible performative experiment that engages deeply with how change can be expressed,” Raffel says, “and how we have the power to make that a good thing.”

More must-see exhibitions during Hong Kong Arts Month

Hong Kong Museum of Art

The Hong Kong Jockey Club Series: Cézanne and Renoir Looking at the World—Masterpieces from the Musée de l’Orangerie and the Musée d’Orsay explores the artistic trajectories – and friendship – of two French Impressionist masters who redefined how to depict the world around them. 

Until 7 May

Para Site 

How to be Happy Together? both explores and challenges dualistic ways of seeing the world, with works by more than 20 artists from Hong Kong, elsewhere in Greater China, and Latin America proposing new modes of queer encounter and connection. 

Until 6 April

Tai Kwun

Records spotlights London-based artist Maeve Brennan, bringing together works from her ongoing, multi-disciplinary project The Goods (2018–present). Drawing from her research into the illegal antiquities trade, Brennan uncovers the mechanisms of looting and trafficking.

Until 8 June