Inside M+’s Mission to Shape Asia’s Art Canon, With Chief Curator Doryun Chong

Since opening in 2021, M+ has rapidly established itself as what is often described as the MoMA of Asia. Conceived from the outset as more than a regional museum, the institution set out to narrate the history of modernity and contemporary culture from within Asia while helping define and reshape the canon as it unfolds in real time. The comparison with the Museum of Modern Art resonates particularly in M+’s ambition to rethink how modern and contemporary culture is collected and presented. Central to this vision is a pioneering cross-category approach that deliberately dissolves traditional disciplinary boundaries, bringing together contemporary art, architecture, design and the moving image within a single institutional framework to explore how visual culture is produced and circulated across multiple fields simultaneously.

Ahead of Art Basel Hong Kong, Observer caught up with M+ curator Doryun Chong to discuss how this vision is reflected in the museum’s programming, its role in the Hong Kong and broader Asian art ecosystems and how its priorities are changing (or not) as it consolidates its position as a leading cultural reference point in Asia.

Chong is the curator behind the major survey of visionary South Korean artist Lee Bul that opened at M+ in time for Hong Kong Art Week, following its initial debut at the Leeum Museum of Art. He also organized the expansive exhibition “Prism of the Real: Making Art in Japan 1989-2010,” which opened at the National Art Center Tokyo during Tokyo Gendai—the result of a partnership between the National Art Center and M+ in Hong Kong. These two ambitious and carefully realized projects are only the latest in Chong’s extensive record of exhibitions across geographies, spotlighting artists and movements that have shaped the evolution of contemporary culture in Asia over the past century.

Doryun Chong, a curator at M+, standing with a contemplative expression, dressed in a black shirt, with a modern, architectural backdrop." width="970" height="1454" data-caption='Doryun Chong, artistic director and chief curator of M+ <span class="media-credit">Photo: Dan Leung Courtesy of M+, Hong Kong</span>'>

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Chong worked at the Museum of Modern Art during the formative years of his career, which shaped his perspective on what it means to be a standard-setting, canon-building institution. “It means writing a history that didn’t exist before. You write it for the future. At the same time, you also have to believe that the canon itself must constantly be revised, broken and rewritten,” he says. “The history remains underwritten and has long been treated as marginal to the established Western narrative. Since the beginning, M+ took very seriously the responsibility to begin writing that history—to write its first version.”

One approach has been to foreground the most influential artists and cultural figures to emerge from the region. Even though M+ is still a very young institution, its programming demonstrates that it has consistently identified key figures who have shaped Asia’s contemporary culture. This thinking informed the museum’s first major exhibition devoted to Yayoi Kusama in 2022. Although the show was a safe blockbuster—Kusama is already one of the most globally recognized names in contemporary art—Chong says the curatorial aim was to reposition her within a broader narrative by emphasizing the often-overlooked decades of the 1970s and 1980s, when she returned to Japan and fell into relative obscurity, rather than focusing solely on her New York years or her global resurgence since the 1990s. “We were very conscious of repositioning her and reframing the narrative around her work.”

Subsequent projects have followed a similar logic. M+ organized the first major retrospective of I. M. Pei, who had never received such a museum survey, despite approaching 100 years old when the exhibition was conceived. Another exhibition reconsidered Zao Wou-Ki’s work, drawing attention to his printmaking practice that has often been overshadowed by the artist’s prominence in the auction market.

“We are always trying to reveal different dimensions of artists and makers whom audiences think they already know,” Chong says. At the same time, the museum is also addressing a history unfolding in the present. This led the institution to highlight artists of the following generation, including Lee Bul, whose work the museum identified as central to understanding the evolution of contemporary culture in the region. The collaboration with the Leeum allowed the project to develop across two cultural contexts, Seoul and Hong Kong. “By staging the exhibition between these two poles, we were able to create a much richer reading of her work as the show travels internationally.” International partnerships are a key part of the M+ strategy to establish the story of modern and contemporary culture as fundamentally transnational—placing artists from China, Japan, Korea, Southeast Asia and the broader Asian diaspora into dialogue with one another, as well as with the global avant-gardes and Western cultural centers.

Even the Hong Kong iteration of the Lee Bul show was conceived very differently from the exhibition’s debut in Seoul. While Korean audiences have had numerous opportunities to encounter the artist’s work over the years, Chong says that many visitors in Hong Kong and the Chinese mainland may be encountering it for the first time, which is why the exhibition was structured as a comprehensive introduction to her practice. “We imagined a visitor who might never have seen her work before, who might not even know whether Lee Bul is a man, a woman or nonbinary. On view through August 9, “Lee Bul: From 1998 to Now” leaves behind part of the cryptic play of installative and sculptural gestures of Bul’s Mon grand récit staged in the retro-futuristic architecture of the Leeum to become a more linear, yet still theatrical, survey of the artist’s career to date. Rather than presenting a full retrospective, the exhibition focuses on what Chong considers the artist’s mature period. Beginning around the late 1990s—when Lee Bul’s visual language took decisive form—it brings together key bodies of work such as the Cyborg, Anagram and Monster series. The goal, Chong adds, is to reveal how the artist developed the conceptual lexicon that has defined her practice over the past two decades.

Before opening the doors of its Herzog & de Meuron-designed building situated over Victoria Harbour and anchoring the broader West Kowloon district, M+ had already begun assembling an impressively extensive collection. Today, it counts more than 9,400 items between the museum’s expanding holdings and the initial nucleus of the Uli Sigg Collection, one of the most significant assemblages of Chinese contemporary art. To this extensive trove, M+ adds over 800 published materials from the M+ Library Special Collection and more than 67,000 items from the M+ Collection Archives.

Rather than presenting the works as a static display, the museum presents them through rotating thematic exhibitions. “The collection is always present, but it’s activated in different ways,” Chong explains. “For instance, the M+ Sigg Collection—which is the beginning and the core of our holdings—always appears in some form.” Alongside it, other spaces feature selections from the museum’s design, architecture, visual art and moving image collections, often organized around broader conceptual themes such as landscape or shifting cultural perspectives. “The goal is to keep the collection active and constantly evolving. Even our special exhibitions often include works from our own collection,” he adds. “That’s one of the ways we keep the collection alive—by bringing it into dialogue with temporary exhibitions and rotating different works over time.”

Chong credits the interdisciplinary structure of M+ to an early vision of its founding members, outlined in a white paper that set the goal of functioning as “more than a museum,” a 21st-century institution where different artistic disciplines coexist fluidly rather than within rigid departmental boundaries. To him, it is important to acknowledge that important precedents, such as MoMA, clearly shaped this vision. “I often think of M+ as standing on the shoulders of giants. It’s important for a museum to remember the history it belongs to. At the same time, because we know both the precedents and perhaps the mistakes some institutions made, we try to do better.” For him, “doing better” means first of all resisting rigid disciplinary divisions. “We try not to be siloed. Instead, we want to be fluid and porous in the way we present different media and disciplines in the galleries. That gives us much more freedom in how we bring together objects, images and works from different fields. And honestly, we have a lot of fun mixing things.”

It’s an approach that reflects how contemporary culture operates today—in a fluid, porous way, as Chong says. This may explain why M+ connects strongly with younger audiences, who are particularly active in Hong Kong and increasingly eager to consume culture across different forms and platforms. On the weekend following the opening of the Lee Bul exhibition, more than 13,000 visitors passed through the museum on Saturday and roughly 15,000 on Sunday—figures that not only include ticket holders entering the galleries but also visitors circulating through the museum’s public spaces and free installations, such as an immersive work created by Ryuichi Sakamoto and Shiro Takatani.

The institution’s audience is also strikingly young: roughly 80 percent of visitors fall between the ages of 16 and 44. For Chong, these figures point to a broader cultural appetite: “There is a tremendous hunger for richer cultural experiences in this region,” he confirms, suggesting that the museum’s success may reflect that demand as much as any particular curatorial formula.

He still feels, however, that the institution has not yet “cracked the code,” as he puts it. “We are still learning with every project.” Some exhibitions have performed far beyond expectations, as with the retrospective devoted to I. M. Pei, which unexpectedly became one of the institution’s most popular shows, despite architecture exhibitions typically attracting a more niche audience and rarely being blockbuster attractions. Chong believes it’s important that the institution still perceives itself as being in an experimental phase. “It feels like a laboratory,” he says. “The success we are seeing in terms of visitor numbers is undeniable. But the formula, if there even is one, is something no one really knows yet. And that’s actually a very interesting space to be in.”

Regarding the museum’s primary audience, Chong acknowledges that the notion of “Asia” itself is far from straightforward. The term can encompass everything from Istanbul across Central Asia to East and Southeast Asia, depending on the perspective, and M+ embraces an expansive interpretation. “For the 12 years that I’ve been here, my simplest answer is that I see Asia as stretching from Japan to Turkey,” Chong says. “It’s the largest possible frame, but it’s also the simplest way to begin.” Yet M+ has always approached the region through what he describes as a concentric model. “Our epicenter is Hong Kong. Historically, culturally and geopolitically, it’s an incredibly interesting point of exchange in Asia. It sits at the juncture between East Asia, Northeast Asia and South and Southeast Asia. It is also a portal for going in and out of mainland China.”

From that epicenter, the museum’s perspective expands outward. “We start with Hong Kong, then move to Greater China, then East and Northeast Asia, then South and Southeast Asia, then the rest of Asia and beyond. We think of our position as a series of ripples moving outward from the center.” As those ripples extend further, however, the connections become more selective. “Our relationship with different parts of the world inevitably becomes more tenuous the further out we go,” he adds. “But there are also important points of resonance.”

In particular, he points to the continued relevance of traditional Western art capitals. “Cities like New York, London and Paris remain very important because of their histories of migration and the formation of diasporic communities. Many Asian artists went there and built their careers. So those cities remain key points of attention for us.” And this dual framework—concentric geography combined with selective global nodes—guides both the museum’s collecting strategy and its exhibitions.

As a key cultural actor within Hong Kong’s ecosystem, M+ also faces the challenge of balancing its broader regional ambitions with its role in supporting and giving visibility to local artists and the rapidly expanding creative community emerging across Hong Kong and the wider Greater Bay Area. Chong was quick to emphasize that the art and artists of Hong Kong remain central to the museum’s mission. “Hong Kong is our home, and our commitment to the local cultural community is very important,” he says. “If you look at the numbers in our collection, more than twenty percent of the works come from Hong Kong.” The museum has also played a significant role in promoting local artists internationally—for example, by organizing the city’s participation in the Venice Biennale six times over 13 years—helping position the local artistic community within a broader global conversation.

Hong Kong artists are deeply embedded in the museum’s programming. Within the collection displays, which occupy roughly three-quarters of the museum’s galleries, Hong Kong artists are consistently represented. Local creators also appear regularly across temporary exhibitions, cinema programs and large-scale commissions—including projects for the museum’s monumental façade. Unique among museums worldwide, the M+ building operates simultaneously as a museum, a cultural landmark and an urban screen for moving-image art through its monumental LED media façade, visible across the city’s iconic skyline.

But it’s worth pointing out that the museum avoids presenting Hong Kong artists in isolation. “Our approach has always been not to sequester them within a purely local category,” Chong says. “Instead, we place them in a broader context—in dialogue with artists from mainland China, from across Asia and also from the West.” That curatorial strategy reflects the city’s hybrid nature. “Modern Hong Kong is fundamentally hybrid—maybe even mongrel,” he concludes with a smile. “Like all of us in today’s global society.”

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