In a landmark development for the international arts community, leaders from three of the world’s most influential cultural institutions have signed a sweeping trilateral agreement. Manhattan’s Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), Paris’s Centre Pompidou, and M+ in Hong Kong have officially joined forces, granting one another unprecedented access to their respective holdings. The partnership is designed to foster increased global viewership, encourage collaborative curation, and expand joint research initiatives across continents.
The formal alliance emerges at a significant juncture for all three institutions. It coincides with the eve of M+’s fifth anniversary at its striking physical location in Hong Kong’s vibrant West Kowloon Cultural District, where the museum overlooks Victoria Harbor from the Kowloon peninsula. The agreement also marks a major milestone just one year into the tenure of MoMA Director Christophe Cherix, signaling a forward-looking vision for the New York institution under his leadership. Alongside Centre Pompidou President Laurent Le Bon, these museum directors are positioning their organizations to better navigate an increasingly interconnected global art landscape.
This ambitious partnership does not happen in a vacuum; rather, it follows a broader wave of institutional resource pooling, strategic alliances, and joint acquisitions that surged in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. As cultural institutions worldwide face mounting financial pressures, major deficits, and escalating operating costs, museum leadership is increasingly turning toward collaboration as a sustainable path forward. By sharing resources, institutions can reduce overhead expenses while continuing to deliver world-class programming to the public. This trend toward consolidation and cooperation has reshaped the museum sector in recent months, highlighted by other major institutional shifts, such as the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s announcement earlier this year regarding its forthcoming merger with Ronald Lauder’s Neue Galerie, which is slated to commence in 2028.
As modern art institutions grapple with the demands of the twenty-first century, leadership emphasizes that traditional models of operation must adapt. "Museums must evolve to reflect the complexity of our world," said M+ Museum Director Suhanya Raffel in a press statement detailing the newly minted alliance. By breaking down traditional institutional silos, the partnership aims to create a fluid exchange of ideas, scholarship, and physical artworks that transcends geographic boundaries.
The foundations for this unprecedented trilateral agreement were laid through a series of increasingly close bilateral collaborations between M+ and its two international partners. M+—which houses the renowned Sigg collection of contemporary Chinese art alongside thousands of other contemporary works from across Asia—has steadily built a reputation as a global hub for modern and contemporary visual culture. These prior engagements heavily foregrounded the current trilateral accord, establishing a track record of mutual trust and shared academic and curatorial goals.
In early 2025, the Hong Kong-based museum signed a foundational memorandum of understanding with MoMA. That initial agreement laid down clear objectives for shared curatorial practices, conservation techniques, and scholarly exchange. Building on that momentum, M+ and the Centre Pompidou established a multi-year strategic partnership this spring. That arrangement was explicitly designed to strengthen the cultural dialogue between their respective continents through a combination of joint exhibitions, extensive collections sharing, and a dedicated, funded fellowship program designed to nurture emerging curatorial talent.
Under the umbrella of the new trilateral agreement, these previous bilateral initiatives will expand into a fully integrated global network. Audiences in New York, Paris, and Hong Kong can anticipate a rich roster of intermuseum loans and joint exhibitions that draw from the collective depth of all three institutions. Rather than operating as isolated repositories of culture, MoMA, the Centre Pompidou, and M+ are creating a dynamic, shared ecosystem that promises to redefine how modern and contemporary art is curated, studied, and experienced on a global scale.
