60 Picasso masterpieces to go on display at Hong Kong’s M+ Museum in March 2025
- Exhibition, titled ‘Picasso for Asia: A Conversation’, to also feature 80 pieces from the Hong Kong museum’s collection
- Picasso’s artworks will include The Acrobat (1930), Figures by the Sea (1931), and Large Still Life with Pedestal Table (1931)
More than 60 masterpieces by Pablo Picasso will go on display at Hong Kong’s M+ Museum in March next year, marking the first collaboration of its kind in Asia and one of many agreements forged at the International Cultural Summit in the city.
The exhibition, titled “Picasso for Asia: A Conversation”, is co-curated by West Kowloon Cultural District’s M+ and the Musee National Picasso-Paris. It is set to feature more than 80 pieces from the Hong Kong collection, as well as 60 artworks from France.
“Our collections will be seen in dialogue with [Musee National Picasso-Paris’] collections, something that has never happened before, especially with Asian collections,” M+ Museum director Suhanya Raffel said on Wednesday.
Raffel said that such a collaboration was possible now because of the presence of facilities such as the M+ that could serve as a counterpart to renowned global museums.
“M+, with this very singular collection on China’s art in the 20th century, is exactly the place where we can do this dialogue,” said Musee National Picasso-Paris president Cecile Debray, who described the exhibition as “groundbreaking”.
Debray said that examining Picasso’s works from an Asian contemporary perspective “decentres the Western point of view”, calling it “an unprecedented proposal”.
She also highlighted the social aspect of learning about his works, from the debates on his behaviour with women from a Me Too movement perspective to his links with communism.
The exhibition also marked the first significant presentation of Picasso’s works in Hong Kong in more than a decade and an unprecedented cross-cultural and intergenerational dialogue between the 20th-century European master and contemporary Asian artists.
Picasso’s artworks will include The Acrobat (1930), Figures by the Sea (1931), and Large Still Life with Pedestal Table (1931).
Works from M+’s collection by Asian and Asian-diasporic artists, including Luis Chan, Gu Dexin, Madokoro (Akutagawa) Saori, Isamu Noguchi, and Tanaami Keiichi, will also be featured.
Organisers said the exhibition took three years of collaboration to come together, with curators from both institutions visiting the other in person to hand-pick works from the respective collections to be featured in the exhibition.
Earlier this week, the West Kowloon Cultural District hosted the three-day International Cultural Summit that concluded on Tuesday and drew the top brass of museums and cultural institutions from the United States, United Kingdom, France, Spain, Qatar, Australia, Colombia, Japan, Singapore, Thailand, mainland China and more to Hong Kong.
In addition to five panel discussions where the leaders discussed pressing industry topics, 21 memorandums of understanding were signed by attending global institutions, one of which is with the Musee National Picasso-Paris.
The exhibition is co-presented by the annual arts festival Le French May and will run between March 15 and July 13 next year.
