M+ hooks up with CHANEL in major 3-year partnership – M+, Asia’s global museum of contemporary visual culture in the West Kowloon Cultural District in Hong Kong, is pleased to announce a three-year partnership with CHANEL
We are honoured to partner with M+ on their pioneering curation and preservation of moving image to inspire creativity, foster new ways of thinking, and celebrate Hong Kong Cinema. Through CHANEL’s long-standing cultural commitment and our major new partnership with M+, we hope to create opportunities for an emerging generation of moving image artists from Hong Kong and the region to imagine the next.
Yana Peel, Global Head of Arts & Culture, CHANEL,
CHANEL is M+’s Major Partner and will support a lead curatorial position—titled CHANEL Lead Curator, Moving Image—to enhance M+’s moving image programmes. This exciting collaboration marks CHANEL’s first-ever partnership with a cultural institution in Hong Kong. It demonstrates both parties’ commitment to empower creative and critical thinking, contributing to the development of moving image in Asia and beyond.
We are delighted that CHANEL, renowned for its influence over the global spheres of creation and visual culture, shares a united vision with M+ to preserve film culture and nurture moving image practices, and more importantly, support arts and cultural innovators to advance new ideas and greater representation. CHANEL’s generous support is instrumental in pushing the boundaries of M+’s curatorial endeavours in moving image and promoting the vitality of our rich film heritage to the global audience.
Suhanya Raffel, Museum Director, M+
Building upon the century of cultural patronage at the House, CHANEL has partnered with leading institutions worldwide to present innovative cultural programmes that inspire creativity, advance the new and the next, and activate history to inspire future generations of artists and filmmakers in Hong Kong and worldwide. Previously, in 2022, CHANEL supported M+’s ‘Film Course: Women Make Film’, a screening of Mark Cousins’ documentary in seven chapters accompanied by educational film classes in the inaugural edition of M+ Cinema.
The three-year partnership between M+ and CHANEL, starting in July 2023, will cover a patronage of the position of CHANEL Lead Curator, Moving Image, a role currently taken by Silke Schmickl. Schmickl leads the development of M+’s moving image collection, commissions, and film and curatorial programmes, and oversees the activities of the museum’s Moving Image Centre. CHANEL’s support also covers selected M+ Cinema programmes in the coming three years, including ‘Rediscoveries’, a recurring series featuring forgotten gems and restored classics, and ‘Afterimage’, showcasing works by some of today’s most important video artists and experimental filmmakers.
Additionally, the partnership will help realise two new endeavours—‘M+ Restored’ is a new film restoration programme to preserve Hong Kong’s rich cinematic heritage; and the Asian Avant-Garde Film Circulation Library, the first and only one of its kind in Asia, is an extensive research and collection-building initiative to acknowledge and celebrate generations of Asia’s pioneering film artists. All the partnership programmes will be accompanied by dialogues and conversations, such as guest lectures, masterclasses, or workshops, to encourage interest and understanding of film culture and to inspire future generations of artists. Complimentary tickets will be available for students and the general public for selected screening.
We are immensely grateful for CHANEL’s support towards our multifaceted and pioneering moving image activities. The partnership allows us to kick off two important initiatives to research and preserve the work of some of Asia’s most significant film artists, and present them within pertinent contemporary curatorial frameworks of international moving image culture.
Silke Schmickl, CHANEL Lead Curator, Moving Image, M+
M+, West Kowloon Cultural District, 38 Museum Drive, Kowloon mplus.org.hk
About
Silke Schmickl joined M+ in 2021 as Lead Curator, Moving Image. She was previously curator at the National Gallery Singapore and the Institute of Contemporary Arts Singapore, a researcher at the German Center for Art History in Paris, and the co-founding director of Lowave, a Paris-based curatorial platform and publishing house for moving image artists. She has initiated and directed numerous art and film projects focusing on emerging art scenes in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia, and has curated exhibitions in partnership with museums and biennials around the world.
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, it is 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. M+ is 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. mplus.org.hk
