Aric Chen is a design and architecture curator, writer and consultant based in Shanghai. He is currently Curator-at-Large for M+, the new museum for visual culture under construction in Hong Kong's West Kowloon Cultural District. From 2012-2018, he served as that institution's first Lead Curator for Design and Architecture, overseeing the formation of its design and architecture collection, curatorial team, and program.

Prior to M+, Chen was the first Creative Director of Beijing Design Week. Over the years, he has organized dozens of projects and exhibitions internationally, in addition to serving on numerous juries, and as a curatorial advisor to the UABB Shenzhen Biennale of Architecture\Urbanism, the Cooper-Hewitt Design Triennale (New York), and the Gwangju Design Biennale. Chen is the author of Brazil Modern (Monacelli, 2016), and has been a frequent contributor to The New York Times, Wallpaper*, Fantastic Man, Architectural Record, and other publications.

11.12 Re-centering the global

Since it was first proposed in 2007, the M+ museum for 20th and 21st century visual culture in Hong Kong has positioned itself as one of the most ambitious new museum projects in the world-a "global museum, from an Asian perspective."

While that unofficial catchphrase has proven useful in efficiently describing the museum's mission, the reality is, of course, more nuanced, complex, and even problematic. This talk will provide an overview of M+'s formation, starting from its inception to the current-day, two years before the anticipated opening of its 65,000-squaremeter, Herzog & de Meuron-designed building. While focusing on the development of the museum's curatorial strategy, programming and permanent collectionespecially in the disciplines of design and architecture-the discussion will aim to place M+ in the broader context of emerging institutional narratives, identity, transnationalism, multipolarism, and shifting local, regional and geopolitical discourses.