MoMA, Centre Pompidou and M+ Form Collection Alliance

MoMA, the Centre Pompidou and Hong Kong’s M+ have formed an alliance to share collection access and curatorial research, with a five-year exhibition planned across all three museums. The project will bring works from their collections together to examine what “the contemporary” means.

What the alliance changes

The agreement creates a framework for the museums to develop exhibitions and programmes together, drawing on their holdings and curatorial work. Its central project is a five-year exhibition that will travel to MoMA in New York, the Centre Pompidou in Paris and M+ in Hong Kong. Works from all three collections are to be included at each institution.

The collaboration links museums whose collections cross disciplinary boundaries and focus on contemporary art. Sharing access allows curators to consider works from the three holdings together, rather than treating each collection as a separate institutional resource. The museums have not described the exhibition as a single fixed display; its planned presentation at each venue gives the partnership a sustained public programme.

How the museums got here

The alliance extends earlier partnerships between M+ and each of the other museums. M+ and MoMA signed a memorandum of understanding in early 2025, setting shared objectives for curatorial work, conservation and scholarship. In May 2026, M+ and the Centre Pompidou established a strategic partnership focused on exhibitions, collection sharing and a funded fellowship.

Those agreements provide a basis for the three-way arrangement, while the museums’ shared interest in cross-disciplinary collecting gives it a common curatorial focus. M+ holds the Sigg collection of contemporary Chinese art alongside thousands of other contemporary works from across Asia. That collection brings a distinct regional body of work into a partnership spanning New York, Paris and Hong Kong.

Who it affects and how

For visitors, the clearest planned result is an exhibition involving works from all three museums, presented at each institution over five years. The alliance also sets out to bring the collections to wider audiences through joint exhibitions and programmes. Researchers and curators stand to benefit from expanded collaboration in scholarship and from the ability to work across institutional holdings.

The partnership comes as M+ approaches the fifth anniversary of its physical location in Hong Kong’s West Kowloon Cultural District. It also follows previous museum collaborations that combined resources and joint acquisitions. The agreement is therefore both a curatorial undertaking and a way for institutions to coordinate their collections and expertise.

What remains undecided

The museums have not set out the exhibition’s title, opening dates, works, curators or sequence of presentations. Nor have they detailed how collection access will operate beyond the stated collaboration, or what the funded fellowship in the M+–Centre Pompidou partnership will involve. Those specifics will determine how the five-year plan takes shape at each venue.

M+ director Suhanya Raffel said museums must evolve to reflect the complexity of the world. The practical test will be how the three institutions turn that shared ambition into exhibition choices; visitors will need to check the museums’ announcements for the programme and dates.