Three of the world’s most closely watched modern and contemporary art institutions have agreed to work as one. The Museum of Modern Art in New York, Centre Pompidou in Paris and M+ in Hong Kong announced a cultural alliance today, signing a Framework Agreement at M+ on 30 October in front of trustees and stakeholders from all three museums.
The deal covers shared exhibitions, joint programming, long-term loans and closer cooperation on curatorial research and conservation. Each museum keeps its independence and identity. Together, they report around 10 million in-person visitors a year and 125 million online.
The directors who signed were Christophe Cherix of MoMA, Laurent Le Bon of Centre Pompidou and Suhanya Raffel of M+.
Cherix, the David Rockefeller Director of MoMA, described the museums as “embassies for each other”, a gateway onto three continents. He said the alliance would allow the institutions to align programming, organise joint shows, preserve art together and reach audiences worldwide. “More than the sum of our parts” was how he put it.
Le Bon was more pointed about the practical gains. No single institution, he said, can hold the full range of global creativity. Among the first benefits he named were long-term loans, which would let the museums give key artists and movements a fuller airing.
Raffel pitched the alliance as a response to a changing field. Museums, she said, have to reflect the complexity of the world, and she framed the partnership as a shared commitment to artistic innovation and public engagement through research and exchange. M+, which she called Asia’s global museum of contemporary visual culture, would bring perspectives from Hong Kong and the wider region. She also spoke of a more cooperative and sustainable future for museums.
The three institutions are far apart in age and background. MoMA opened in 1929, Centre Pompidou in 1977 and M+ in 2021. What links them, the announcement says, is a focus on public education and on living artists, and between them they hold a broad, multidisciplinary record of 20th- and 21st-century creativity.
Timing matters for Centre Pompidou. Its landmark Beaubourg building is about to close for a major renovation, and the museum has been taking its programme outside its walls under the Constellation banner, a series of events across Paris, France and abroad to mark its 50th anniversary. A deal that opens doors in New York and Hong Kong fits neatly with that.
M+ sits in Hong Kong’s West Kowloon Cultural District, in a Herzog & de Meuron building, on Victoria Harbour, with TFP Farrells and Arup. It has 33 galleries, a Moving Image Centre, a Research Centre and one of the largest LED facades in the world. Its collection of more than 9,000 works is drawn mainly from Hong Kong, mainland China and the rest of Asia, and includes the M+ Sigg Collection, one of the most comprehensive holdings of contemporary Chinese visual art anywhere.
Top Photograph Brett Beyer © MoMA