M+

To open the French May Art Festival, M+ museum will be presenting its first special exhibition on photography in collaboration with the Bibliothèque nationale de France (BnF). See more than 250 significant photos from BnF’s world-renowned collection alongside over 30 works from M+’s own collection. If you like the melancholic and dramatic quality of black-and-white photography, you’ll definitely enjoy this exhibition. Standard tickets are on sale for $140 while discounts are available for M+ members and guests of M+ patrons.

M+ Museum’s new thematic exhibition aims to explore the connection between landscape and humanity in our post-industrial and increasingly virtual world. Literally translating to ‘mountain and water’, shanshui is a Chinese cultural concept that has inspired Asian ink paintings across millennia. Almost 130 works split into nine thematic sections will reimagine landscape through art, moving images, sound, design, architecture, and other large-scale mediums from a range of international artists, architects, and creators.

M+ will host its first-ever Asian Avant-Garde Film Festival in a four-day programme that celebrates independent art and filmmaking across Asia. For this first edition, the films will re-examine the past and look back at cross-cultural and intergenerational lineages to create new historical narratives. Split between the Grand Stair and M+ Cinema House 1, the programme will be grouped into themes that touch on motifs such as the relationship between the self and society, animation work, and spotlights on particular artists such as video art pioneer Zhang Peili. We’re most looking forward to essay-films using found footage by Bo Wang, Ho Tzu Nyen, and Lee Kai Chung that unveil Hong Kong’s slippery relationship with her neighbours; the Fearless & Fierce programme which shows how filmmakers from the 70s to the present day have addressed the dilemmas of being women in Asia; and Taiwanese artist Su Hui-yu’s recreation of the 1985 homoerotic cult classic The Glamorous Boys of Tang by Chiu Kang-chien.  For the duration of the festival, the Moving Image Centre will become the Festival Lounge, hosting workshops, talks, film presentations, and more. Definitely hit up the museum on the night of May 31 for Amorphous Bodies: A Happening, an immersive art experience with performances by artist filmmakers and simultaneously a party with a diverse lineup of DJs. Tickets for screenings at the Asian Avant-Garde Film Festival are selling for $85, while some special programmes will cost $120. Fest

M+ will host the first full-scale retrospective of renowned Chinese-American architect Ieoh Ming Pei, his life, his philosophy, and his works, presented through various mediums. Better known as I. M. Pei, he is the mastermind designer behind some of the world’s most recognisable works of modernist architecture, including the glass-and-steel Louvre Pyramid, the Miho Museum in Shigaraki, and Hong Kong’s own Bank of China Tower. Sorted into six themes that place Pei’s architecture within sociocultural contexts, the exhibition will consist of over 300 items on display, most of which have never been exhibited before. Several international photographers have also been commissioned to photograph Pei’s buildings, and architectural models of some of his most significant projects have also been made.  The exhibition will open on June 29 with a free public talk featuring Pei’s son, Sandi Li Chung Pei, as well as Pei’s close collaborators Calvin Tsao and Aslıhan Demirtaş – they will discuss the relevance and impact of Pei’s life and work across various cities. Tickets for this special exhibition are priced at $160, with concessions available. Ticket holders can also access all general admission exhibitions at M+ on the same day.