M+, Hong Kong's museum of contemporary visual culture, has formed an alliance with New York's Museum of Modern Art and the Centre Pompidou in Paris under which the three will share their collections and co-organize exhibitions for a combined 10 million in-person visitors a year, the museums said.

The directors of the three institutions signed a framework agreement at M+ on Oct. 30, according to a joint statement. For Hong Kong, the deal ties a museum that opened only in 2021 to two of the West's best-known collecting institutions, and it gives the city's West Kowloon Cultural District a long-term pipeline of loans as Asian cities court cultural tourists.

The museums put their combined online audience at 125 million. Each will keep its own governance and identity, the statement said.

What M+, MoMA and the Pompidou will share

The core of the arrangement is that the three holdings will be treated as one shared collection, curated by staff on three continents, ARTnews reported after interviewing the directors in Paris.

The first concrete steps run on a multiyear timetable. From late 2027, a selection of major works from M+ will be installed on long-term loan in MoMA's collection galleries in New York, and a long-term Centre Pompidou gallery is due to open at MoMA in 2028, ARTnews said. Parallel plans are being developed at the other two museums.

Over the next five years the partners plan a joint exhibition on the idea of "the contemporary," drawn from all three collections and shown at each venue. Curators from M+ and the Pompidou will also join MoMA's C-MAP research program, which studies art histories outside North America and Western Europe, according to ARTnews. A steering committee of the three directors and senior curators will meet monthly, with the first annual in-person meeting due at MoMA in November.

Laurent Le Bon, the Pompidou's president, said in the statement that the alliance would allow long-term loans that deepen how key artists and movements are presented. The Paris museum's main building is closed for a renovation and is scheduled to reopen in 2030, ARTnews noted, which makes partner galleries abroad a way to keep its collection in view.

The directors also pointed to cost. Shipping works for extended stays rather than short tours brings economies of scale, they told ARTnews, and M+'s Chinese contemporary art placed at MoMA would be easier for other U.S. museums to borrow. "We can't just keep collecting, so we are sharing instead," M+ Museum Director Suhanya Raffel told the magazine.

The alliance grows out of earlier bilateral deals: M+ signed a memorandum of understanding with MoMA in February 2025 and a strategic partnership with the Pompidou earlier this year, according to ARTnews.

M+ at five: visitors, sponsors and a gala

The announcement came as M+ prepares to mark its fifth anniversary with eight days of events from Nov. 1 to Nov. 8, including free admission to designated exhibitions on Nov. 8. The museum said it has drawn more than 12.5 million visitors since opening, about half of them from Hong Kong and the rest from mainland China and elsewhere. Its collection now numbers more than 9,000 works, anchored by the M+ Sigg Collection of Chinese contemporary art.

Corporate support has been widening. On Oct. 21, M+ said Chanel had extended its partnership for three more years and become a lead partner, adding a program called Pioneering Visions that opens with a Sarah Sze solo presentation in February 2027. HSBC has been a lead partner since 2022.

The museum held its fundraising M+ Gala on Oct. 31 for more than 450 guests, including the heads of MoMA and the Pompidou. A live auction featured six donated works by artists including Lee Bul and Takashi Murakami, and the museum said all proceeds will go to collections, exhibitions, commissions and operations. It did not disclose the amount raised.

M+ said it now has 15 collaboration agreements with museums worldwide, including Tate and the Getty Conservation Institute. Its touring shows have traveled widely: "Yayoi Kusama: 1945 to Now" drew more than 1.65 million visitors across Hong Kong, Bilbao and Porto, the museum said.

Hong Kong Palace Museum signs with the Rijksmuseum

M+ is not the only West Kowloon museum adding European partners. The Hong Kong Palace Museum said on Oct. 26 that it had signed a memorandum of understanding with Amsterdam's Rijksmuseum, its 20th partnership with an international institution since opening in 2022.

The first result will be a 2027 exhibition of about 100 17th-century Dutch works, including paintings, ship models, ceramics and textiles, with a focus on trade between the Dutch Republic and China. Johannes Vermeer's "The Love Letter" will be shown in Hong Kong for the first time, alongside the largest group of Rembrandt works ever presented in the Greater Bay Area, the museum said.

The deal was signed in Amsterdam on Oct. 21 by Museum Director Louis Ng and Rijksmuseum Director Taco Dibbits. Ng will retire in early January 2027 at the end of his contract, the West Kowloon Cultural District Authority announced in July. The museum's previous blockbuster, "Ancient Egypt Unveiled," closed on Aug. 31 after drawing more than 670,000 visitors over nine and a half months.

West Kowloon says the district draws more than 10 million visitors a year. The next dates to watch are the alliance's first annual meeting at MoMA this month and the installation of M+ works in New York from late 2027.