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.

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.

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 screenings.

Suhanya Raffel, Museum Director, M+, says, ‘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.’

Yana Peel, Global Head of Arts & Culture, CHANEL, comments, ‘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.’

Silke Schmickl, CHANEL Lead Curator, Moving Image, M+, says, ‘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.’

About Silke Schmickl, CHANEL Lead Curator, Moving Image, M+

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.

About M+

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.

About the West Kowloon Cultural District

The West Kowloon Cultural District is one of the largest and most ambitious cultural projects in the world. Its vision is to create a vibrant new cultural quarter for Hong Kong on forty hectares of reclaimed land located alongside Victoria Harbour. With a varied mix of theatres, performance spaces, and museums, the West Kowloon Cultural District will produce and host world-class exhibitions, performances, and cultural events, providing twenty-three hectares of public open space, including a two-kilometre waterfront promenade.

CHANEL Arts & Culture

The CHANEL Culture Fund promotes the singular approach of the House, which has been committed to the arts for more than a century. Global, multidisciplinary, and collaborative in spirit, the CHANEL Culture Fund endeavours to support artists and nurture the conditions where creativity can thrive.

Major initiatives honour and enable the work of creative individuals and cultural institutions, often at pivotal inflexion points. Key philanthropic partnerships include the National Portrait Gallery, London, the Centre Pompidou, Paris, and the Power Station of Art, Shanghai, among others, as well as the CHANEL Next Prize, which celebrates creators and accelerates their future successes, and the podcast CHANEL Connects, featuring thought leaders and game changers across culture.

CHANEL and Cinema

The history of CHANEL is intimately linked to cinema's own history. House founder and visionary Gabrielle Chanel instinctively understood the evocative power and influence of this new artistic medium, which revolutionized the arts in the 20th century. Witnessing its major developments, she maintained close ties with the world of film throughout her career, working with the leading filmmakers of her time, and supporting her fellow creative peers. The ongoing story of CHANEL and cinema is now being written in the present, with an eye towards the future, through the House's commitment to women and emerging filmmakers. By supporting the new and the next, CHANEL perpetuates a certain spirit dear to its own creator: one of an insatiable quest for modernity and personal expression.