The Hong Kong Jockey Club Series: Picasso for Asia—A Conversation

M+, Asia’s global museum of contemporary visual culture in the West Kowloon Cultural District in Hong Kong, proudly presents The Hong Kong Jockey Club Series: Picasso for Asia—A Conversation. The special exhibition is a rich intercultural and intergenerational dialogue between more than sixty masterpieces by Spanish artist Pablo Picasso (1881–1973) from the Musée national Picasso-Paris (MnPP), which holds the largest collection of works by Picasso in the world, and over eighty works by thirty Asian and Asian-diasporic artists from the M+ Collections and select loans from a museum, a foundation, and private collections. Co-organised by M+ and MnPP, this exhibition is a significant milestone in which masterpieces from MnPP are being shown alongside works from a museum collection in Asia for the first time. It is also the first major showcase of Picasso’s works in Hong Kong in over a decade, offering an unprecedented and unique perspective on the artist’s wide-reaching influence and what it means to be an artist in our time. 

The Hong Kong Jockey Club Series: Picasso for Asia—A Conversation is co-presented by M+ and French May Arts Festival as the opening programme of the French May Arts Festival 2025. It is generously supported by the Title Sponsor, The Hong Kong Jockey Club Charities Trust; the Major Sponsors, HSBC, Cathay, C C Land, and Chubb Life; supported by 1O1O, and The Ritz-Carlton, Hong Kong, and financially supported by the Mega Arts and Cultural Events Fund under the Culture, Sports, and Tourism Bureau of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government.

Co-curated by Doryun Chong, Artistic Director and Chief Curator, M+, and François Dareau, Research Fellow, MnPP, supported by Hester Chan, Curator, Collections, M+, the exhibition poses an interpretative framework for examining the works of the twentieth-century European master in relation to contemporary Asian and Asian-diasporic artists active today and in the recent past. 

This Special Exhibition introduces four artist archetypes that encapsulate why Picasso is considered the quintessential twentieth-century artist and how the legacy of his art and life continues to influence contemporary artists as well as the public to this day. The four archetypes also serve as the sections of the exhibition and as powerful paradigms to which the contemporary Asian artists in the exhibition respond in their diverse, individualistic practices. 

To coincide with the exhibition, a 240-page monograph Picasso/Asia: A Conversation with 216 colour illustrations will be published in March 2025 by Thames & Hudson in collaboration with M+. 

With the support from The Hong Kong Jockey Club Charities Trust, M+ and the French May Arts Festival will co-present a series of Jockey Club Community Outreach and Arts Education Programmes throughout the exhibition period. These include free family drop-in events, primary and secondary school tours for teachers and students, special visits for non-governmental organisations, and screening programmes. For more information, please visit mplus.org.hk.