M+ announces two livestreamed public talks

M+ announces two livestreamed public talks: M+ International × National Gallery Singapore and Sigg Fellowship for Chinese Art Research 2020 Public Talk.

M+ International × National Gallery Singapore: How Can Museums Matter Today?

The two-day online programme ‘How Can Museums Matter Today?’, a collaboration between M+ and National Gallery Singapore, will examine the role of museums in the age of the COVID-19 pandemic and its aftermath from the perspective of two newly formed institutions in Asia. The programme will consist of two public talks on Zoom which will both be followed by a Q&A session. Considering the myriad changes facing museums today, conversations between M+ and the Gallery curators will depart from two institutional standpoints—collection building and audience engagement. These talks will touch upon the different ways museums can uphold inclusivity and diversity in their spaces, find opportunity in adversity, adapt to the rise of digitalisation, and encourage audience participation in these contexts.

In the lead-up to the museum opening, M+ is launching, through partnerships with other institutions around the world, the M+ International initiative, which aims to create a platform to discuss current issues facing museums. Previous M+ International initiatives took place in partnership with the Sydney Opera House, Mori Art Museum, and Power Station of Art.

Public Discussions:

Collections and Their Relevance: Why Do Collections Matter?

• Date: Tuesday, 23 February 2021
• Time: Hong Kong time 7–8pm
• Format: Online
• Platform: Zoom (Registration)
• Speakers:
  • Horikawa Lisa, Deputy Director, Collections Development & Senior Curator, National Gallery Singapore
  • Russell Storer, Director, Curatorial and Collections, National Gallery Singapore
  • Pauline. J. Yao, Lead Curator, Visual Art, M+
• Language: English, with simultaneous interpretation in Cantonese
• Fee: Free of charge

Audiences and Engagement: What Can a Museum Be?

• Date: Wednesday, 24 February 2021
• Time: Hong Kong time 7–8pm
• Format: Online
• Platform: Zoom (Registration)
• Speakers:
  • Stella Fong, Lead Curator, Learning and Interpretation, M+
  • Keri Ryan, Curator, Learning and Interpretation, M+
  • Suenne Megan Tan, Director, Audience Development & Engagement, National Gallery Singapore
• Language: English, with simultaneous interpretation in Cantonese
• Fee: Free of charge

M+ Sigg Fellowship for Chinese Art Research 2020 Public Talk: Diffused Religion and the Origins of Chinese Avant-Garde Art

Beijing-based researcher and independent curator Yang Zi received the inaugural Sigg Fellowship for Chinese Art Research in 2020. A public talk on his research will be held next month.

Sacrificial practices in Chinese folk religion have changed over thousands of years. However, core concepts, objects, and rituals have, for the most part, remained the same. Since the second half of the twentieth century, gods have been absent from the official government position, but folk religious practices and art have continued, filling a social role. Artists in the 1980s and 1990s adopted elements from folk religion, and in doing so they unintentionally defined a collective method that contributed to the growth of the avant-garde. Behind the well-known narrative that these artists responded to their reality with radical work, there is a long, fraught history of folk art in relation to systems of authority. This research examines sacrifice in folk religion as a point of origin for Chinese avant-garde art, identifying it as a shared resource for artists as they constructed their visual and conceptual languages.

• Date: Tuesday, 2 March 2021
• Time: Hong Kong time 7–8:30pm
• Format: Online
• Platform: Zoom (Registration)
• Bilibili
• Speaker:
  • Yang Zi, Beijing based researcher and independent curator, Recipient of the inaugural Sigg Fellowship for Chinese Art Research
• Moderator:
  • Dr Pi Li, Sigg Senior Curator and Head of Curatorial Affairs, M+
• Language: Mandarin, with English simultaneous interpretation
• Fee: Free of charge

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About M+

M+ is a museum dedicated to collecting, exhibiting, and interpreting visual art, design and architecture, moving image, and Hong Kong visual culture of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. In Hong Kong’s West Kowloon Cultural District, we are building one of the largest museums of modern and contemporary visual culture in the world, with a bold ambition to establish ourselves as one of the world’s leading cultural institutions. Our aim is to create a new kind of museum that reflects our unique time and place, a museum that builds on Hong Kong’s historic balance of the local and the international to define a distinctive and innovative voice for Asia’s twenty-first century.

About the West Kowloon Cultural District

The West Kowloon Cultural District is one of the largest and most ambitious cultural projects in the world. Its vision is to create a vibrant new cultural quarter for Hong Kong on forty hectares of reclaimed land located alongside Victoria Harbour. With a varied mix of theatres, performance spaces, and museums, the West Kowloon Cultural District will produce and host world-class exhibitions, performances, and cultural events, providing twenty-three hectares of public open space, including a two-kilometre waterfront promenade.