M+

M+ is a museum of visual culture in the West Kowloon Cultural District of Hong Kong, on the shore of Victoria Harbour. It opened on 12 November 2021 with a mandate to collect, display, and interpret twentieth- and twenty-first-century visual art, design and architecture, and moving image. Conceived to rival institutions such as Tate Modern, the Museum of Modern Art in New York, and the Centre Pompidou in Paris, M+ represents one of the most significant new museum projects in Asia. Its name derives from the concept of being a "museum and more," signalling ambition to move beyond conventional art museum models by embracing architecture, film, animation, video games, and other forms of moving image. The museum is administered by the West Kowloon Cultural District Authority, a government sub-agency, and led by Museum Director Suhanya Raffel since January 2019.

The inaugural director, Lars Nittve, who led the museum from 2011 to 2016, articulated the institution's founding vision: to transcend the typical art museum by showcasing diverse subjects including architecture, film, and all manner of moving images. Planning for the museum was embedded within the broader West Kowloon Cultural District masterplan designed by Foster + Partners. An international architectural competition in 2012 shortlisted six finalist teams, each receiving HK$1 million; the winning design by Herzog & de Meuron and Farrells was announced in June 2013. Construction began in 2014, and a time capsule containing artwork by local schoolchildren was laid on site in 2015, to be unsealed in 100 years. The building was completed in December 2020, with the occupation permit obtained on 24 December 2020, and the museum opened to the public on 12 November 2021. The institution, budgeted at HK$5.9 billion, has been led since January 2019 by Suhanya Raffel. Plans exist for a separate subsidiary company to ensure future "independence and efficiency."

The M+ Collections concentrate on twentieth- and twenty-first-century visual culture across four disciplines: design and architecture, moving image, visual art, and the thematic area of Hong Kong visual culture. This scope deliberately extends beyond traditional fine art to include sketches, electronic media, installation, objects, painting, photography, architectural models, printed matter, sculpture, and time-based intangibles. The museum's collecting philosophy emphasises both local rootedness and universal openness. By 2013, the museum reported 800 acquired works, over 80 percent by local artists and designers; by March 2014, this had grown to roughly 2,700 works, and by 2021 the collection contained over 6,410 objects. The museum has actively documented ephemeral and endangered aspects of Hong Kong's visual environment, including its neon signage, and has pursued acquisitions that address politically sensitive periods of Chinese history.

The collection's cornerstone is the Uli Sigg donation, announced on 12 June 2012, comprising 1,463 works by 325 artists, conservatively valued at HK$1.3 billion, plus a further 47 purchased works for HK$177 million. Sigg, whose holdings represent the largest and most comprehensive collection of contemporary Chinese art, selected M+ over a mainland Chinese institution because the collection includes works by artists suppressed by the Chinese government, notably 26 pieces by Ai Weiwei. The museum also holds almost 100 photographs from Liu Heung Shing's "China After Mao" series, including images of the aftermath of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests. In 2013, M+ acquired the most comprehensive public institutional collection of performance art by Tehching Hsieh, the New York-based Taiwanese artist. Architectural holdings include works by Frank Lloyd Wright and Ludwig Mies van der Rohe, models by Ma Yansong, visualisation works by WOHA, an entire sushi bar by Shiro Kuramata, and the complete archive of the British collective Archigram, acquired in 2019 despite reported attempts to block overseas sale. Among early non-Asian artists collected is Candice Breitz, and in 2022 the museum acquired Haegue Yang's installation "Sonic Rescue Ropes." The collection also encompasses graffiti works by Tsang Tsou Choi, the "King of Kowloon."

The museum building, designed by Herzog & de Meuron with Farrells, takes the form of an inverted T. The main horizontal slab containing exhibition spaces is elevated above ground level, permitting pedestrian circulation beneath, while a tower above houses public restaurants, lounges, gardens, offices, and research facilities. The total structure comprises approximately 65,000 square metres, with about 17,200 square metres devoted to exhibition space across 33 gallery rooms, slightly more than MoMA. A distinctive feature is the integration of an LED lighting display system into the horizontal facade louvres, functioning as a gigantic screen for artworks visible across Victoria Harbour. The architects incorporated what they termed "found space" surrounding the Airport Railway tunnels beneath the site into a radical subterranean exhibition and performance area. The building's construction cost exceeded US$760 million by early 2021.

M+ is located in the West Kowloon Cultural District on the Victoria Harbour waterfront in Hong Kong. The museum opened to the public on 12 November 2021, with inaugural exhibitions spanning its main galleries: "Hong Kong: Here and Beyond" on the ground floor, and on the second floor the "M+ Sigg Collection: From Revolution to Globalisation," "Things, Spaces, Interactions," "Individuals, Networks, Expressions," Antony Gormley's "Asian Field," and "The Dream of the Museum." Prior to opening, from 2016 to 2020, the museum operated a temporary pavilion near the construction site for exhibitions, and earlier still mounted projects across Hong Kong under the "Mobile M+" initiative, including installations in Yau Ma Tei (2012), inflatable sculptures on West Kowloon vacant lots (2013), and the online neon sign project NEONSIGNS.HK (2014). The museum is administered by the West Kowloon Cultural District Authority, with Suhanya Raffel serving as Museum Director since January 2019.