M+ Collections

This companion guides readers through a selection of works from M+, the Hong Kong museum of twentieth- and twenty-first-century visual culture, which opens in 2021. The museum's holdings include more than 6,000 works and objects across visual art, moving image, design and architecture, over 1,500 works of contemporary Chinese art from the M+ Sigg Collection, roughly 45,000 items in the M+ Collection Archives, and the M+ Library Special Collection.

The selection features more than 300 artists, designers, filmmakers, photographers and architects, including Zhang Peili, Charlotte Perriand, Nam June Paik, Zaha Hadid and Shigeru Ban. The chapters are arranged by decade, moving from the 1950s to the present day, so the collection's development can be followed across time.

Each maker has an entry paired with analysis from an M+ curator. Twenty-four thematic essays appear between these entries and explore ideas that shaped the collection, among them modernism in Asian art and the future of painting in a digital age.

The book is illustrated with about 725 color images and is intended as a first look at the museum's modern and contemporary holdings for readers new to them.