Lavish HK modern art museum opens in 2017

M+ will feature modern and contemporary Asian art.

M+ is a US$642 million modern and contemporary Asian art museum that will anchor 17 cultural and entertainment venues at Hong Kong’s West Kowloon Cultural District. Swiss architects Herzog & de Meuron will design M+.

Also known as the Museum of Visual Culture, M+ consists of a one-floor horizontal building that hosts galleries and a vertical structure housing offices. The LED-lit exterior, resembling a video screen, can be seen from across Victoria Harbor.

It will house 20th and 21st century art, design, architecture, video and sound installations. M+ is Hong Kong’s answer to the Pompidou Center in Paris or the Guggenheim in Bilbao.

The planned exhibition space will total 17,000 square meters, more than twice that of London’s Tate Modern. M+ will address a longstanding complaint that Hong Kong remains something of a cultural desert.

The museum is the largest component of a government-backed, 40 hectare project that will include 23 hectares of green space built on reclaimed land across from Hong Kong island.

“Creating a design for a museum like M+, expressing the diversity of visual culture with a global perspective but rooted in Hong Kong, is a complex task,” said Lars Nittve, executive director of M+. “But Herzog & de Meuron has succeeded.”

The team consisting of Basel-based Herzog & de Meuron and London firm TFP Farrells was chosen over competing short-listed design firms.

M+ has received about US$774 million from the Hong Kong government, of which US$516 million is for construction and another US$219 million is to build an art collection and cover other costs.