The new M+ museum of modern and contemporary visual culture will open its permanent new home in the West Kowloon Cultural District of Hong Kong in the autumn of 2021. Designed by Herzog & de Meuron, the building is set to become a striking landmark on the waterfront of Hong Kong’s Victoria Harbour. But even before the new building opened, M+ has been busy engaging with local and international audiences through a broad range of programmes and exhibitions and a strategic approach to collecting. The opening of M+’s new home is undoubtedly a milestone in the institution’s ongoing story, yet it also marks an important moment to reflect on its development to date. The Making of M+ is an immersive visual encounter with the many stages of the museum’s evolution. H. G. Masters, the book’s guest editor, and Sulki & Min, its award-winning designers, present images and words relating to M+’s first three decades – starting with the reclamation of the land on which the M+ building stands. While the hundreds of images in the book document the programmes, collections, staff, audiences and architecture that have helped shape the museum, the texts have been carefully selected from key moments in the institution’s formation, encompassing official pronouncements, staff mantras, public reactions, and snippets from the local and international press. Offering a wide range of perspectives and voices, The Making of M+ is an innovative companion to the creation of a remarkable cultural institution – the first of its kind in Hong Kong and Asia. With 360 illustrations in colour

A richly illustrated companion to selected works from the collections at M+. At the heart of Hong Kong's new museum of visual culture are the M+ Collections - the result of a carefully considered programme of collection-building that began with the inception of M+ in 2011. The first of their kind in Asia, the collections comprise four different holdings: the M+ Collection, made up of 6,000-plus works and objects from the worlds of visual art, moving image, and design and architecture, the museum's core areas of interest; the M+ Sigg Collection, consisting of 1,510 works of contemporary Chinese art; the M+ Collection Archives, composed of over 45,000 items; and the M+ Library Special Collection, with 400-plus items. Together, the holdings serve to embody the bold and ambitious mission with which M+ was founded: to become a multidisciplinary museum of contemporary visual culture, rooted in Hong Kong and Asia but with an international outlook. M+ Collections: Highlights presents the work of more than 300 artists, designers, film-makers, photographers and architects specially selected to represent the collections as a whole, from Zhang Peili and Charlotte Perriand to Nam June Paik, Zaha Hadid, and Shigeru Ban. Organized into seven chapters, each encompassing a different decade of the collections' span - from the 1950s to the 2010s - the book consists of individual entries on the featured makers composed of one or more of their works and an insightful analysis by an M+ curator. Interspersed among these entries are 24 thematic essays intended to illuminate some of the movements, tendencies and ideas around which the collections have grown, including modernism in Asian art and the future of painting in a digital world. Full of unexpected connections and new perspectives, M+ Collections: Highlights represents not only an invaluable introduction to M+'s unrivalled storehouse of visual culture but also an indispensable work of reference.