M+ Museum in Hong Kong has unveiled the first full-scale retrospective of the renowned Chinese-American architect leoh Ming Pei (1917-2019), widely known as I. M. Pei. Located in the West Kowloon Cultural District at Asia’s first global museum of contemporary visual culture, the exhibition will be open to the public from June 29, 2024 - January 5, 2025. “I. M. Pei: Life is Architecture” showcases Pei’s career, spanning seven decades across the globe.
Pei’s career is marked by a cast geographic reach, featuring iconic projects such as the National Gallery of Art East Building in Washington, D.C., the Grand Louvre modernization in Paris, the Bank of China Tower in Hong Kong, and the Museum of Islamic Art in Doha. These landmarks across the globe highlight his legacy and influential role in architectural history. Pei’s life and work reflect geopolitical complexities, and his “transcultural vision laid the foundation for contemporary architecture.”
The exhibition, organized with the support of the Estate I. M. Pei, is curated by Shirley Surya, curator of design and architecture at M+. Seven years in the making, this retrospective features over 400 objects, many never exhibited before, including original drawings, architectural models, photographs, films, and other archival documentation from institutional and private collections.
The exhibition is divided into six thematic areas, each exploring different facets of Pei’s unique practice and placing his architectural projects in dialogue with social, cultural, and biographical trajectories. These themes are Pei’s Cross-Cultural Foundations, examining how his upbringing and architectural education enabled him to reconcile multiple cultural influences, Real Estate, and Urban Redevelopment, highlighting Pei’s contributions to mixed-use planning, housing, and urban revitalization projects Art and Civic Form, focusing on Pei’s museum designs and collaborations with artists; Power, Politics, and Patronage, revealing Pei’s technical mastery; Material and Structural Innovation, illustrating Pei and his teams' inventiveness in using materials; and Reinterpreting History through Design, exploring Pei’s interest in making modern architecture relevant to different histories.
To engage architecture students with Pei’s work, M+ has partnered with master’s programs at the University of Hong Kong Department of Architecture and The Chinese University of Hong Kong School of Architecture. Additionally, the exhibition features newly commissioned photographs of eleven of Pei’s built projects. Finally, M+ Museum has programmed different activities for adults and children.
Architecture exhibitions showcase the innovative designs and influential legacies of renowned architects, blending art, culture, and history. In other similar news, the National Building Museum’s new exhibition, Capital Brutalism, explores Brutalist architecture in Washington, D.C., to date. Similarly, the Lindau Art Museum is hosting an exhibition titled “Christo and Jeanne-Claude - A Lifelong Journey,” showcasing the first comprehensive exhibition on the artists. Finally, cultural center Grace Farms opened a new long-term exhibition that aims to shed light on the inner workings of the building industry, offering insights into the methods of producing and distributing building materials.
