About the Collection 關於M+藏品

M+ is an acquiring institution, and to date has amassed a world-class collection of twentieth- and twenty-first-century visual culture. Our collections are composed of the M+ Collection, the M+ Sigg Collection, the M+ Library Special Collection, and the M+ Collection Archives. Our acquisition strategy aims to expand and strengthen the collection across the disciplinary areas of design and architecture, moving image, and visual art, as well as the thematic area of Hong Kong visual culture.

The M+ Acquisition Policy details the museum’s priorities, activities, and processes that guide the collections’ continual development and growth. The policy is re-evaluated at least once every two years to reassess the museum’s processes and collection strategy and to address any imbalances in representation. Items in the collections also receive regular scholarly examination and are reinterpreted throughout their museum lifecycle, inspiring an ongoing discourse within the museum’s exhibitions and programmes.

We embrace open access at M+ and are working towards releasing as much of our collections metadata as possible. Our goal is to unlock the museum’s institutional knowledge and release it into the public domain, driven by M+’s mission as a public institution. Follow our open access journey on M+ Labs.

Collection Online

The Collection Online is an online resource for discovering the M+ Collections. Catalogued by international museum standard (CDWA) in both Chinese and English, the website offers our visitors multiple ways to browse and interact with the ever-growing collections catalogue.

Open Data and the M+ API

We have released an open data set including textual metadata on the M+ Collections under the CC0 1.0 Universal License. The data set is available on GitHub and through a public M+ API to help increase access and encourage creative projects. The data set and API are available for developers, designers, artists, creators—anyone who is curious about telling stories through data.

The data is provided ‘as is’ for research purposes and you may use it at your own risk. Documentation of the museum’s collection is an ongoing process and we are continuing to research and enrich our collections data. This data has been created by curators, registrars, researchers, and scholars working in collaboration with M+ to describe, express, and interpret the objects held in the M+ Collections. Both our GitHub repository and the M+ API will continue to be updated as new data becomes available. M+ makes no representations or warranties of any kind on this data.

Those who use this data will own the intellectual property in their projects. The views, thoughts, and opinions they express as a result belong solely to them and do not represent or reflect those of M+.

Using Collection Images

While collection images are not readily available for public use, access may be granted to researchers and individuals with clear and legitimate research and educational goals. If you have any queries regarding the rights related to the works in our collections, or if you wish to use any images of our collection objects, please email [email protected], stating the title and maker of the work.

M+ collaborates with organisations around the world to grant loans for the purposes of exhibition, research, and education.

All loan requests must be submitted at least twelve months prior to the date of the exhibition opening. For details on submitting a loan request, please read our guide for borrowing from the M+ Collections.

If you have any questions about our loan programme or borrowers guide, please contact us at  [email protected].

Our Collections Management Policy outlines the principles of custodianship and care for the M+ Collections. It details the museum’s responsibilities and established policies for the acquisition, access, loan, care, risk management, intellectual property rights management, and disposal of the objects in the collections.

Collections Management Policy

The M+ collections care team and specialist conservators ensure the good care, preservation, and use of all objects in the M+ Collections.

The Work of Collections Care

We enable the long-term use and access to the M+ Collections, both in physical and digital format. Our strategy is to do what is necessary to care for each object and to ensure that the work’s integrity is preserved and protected for the benefit of future generations.

Working closely with curators, archivists, exhibition designers, librarians, registrars, and collections managers, we ensure the responsible storage, movement, and display of our collections at the museum and at international venues.

We also collaborate with local, regional, and international cultural professionals to bring innovation to the care of our collections and take part in the ongoing conversations related to the best practices of conservation and collections care.

The Work of Conservators

Our specialist conservators and scientists use a combination of preventative and remedial techniques to preserve the museum’s collection objects in storage and during all stages of display. A key aim of our approach is to slow down material change of an object through research into artistic practices, scientific study, preventative measures, and, if necessary, hands-on treatment.

We work alongside curators, scientists, and researchers to ensure the best assessment and treatment of objects, as well as the close supervision of incoming and outgoing loans.

We work on a wide variety of objects that range in materials and techniques. Our areas of expertise and conservation disciplines include:

• Paper
• Photography
• Painting
• Object
• Installation Art and Time-Based Media
• Preventive Conservation
• Conservation Science

As conservators, we:

• Preserve the collections through a preventive and risk-based approach
• Fully document all treatments and preserve cultural significance with minimal intervention
• Develop and improve conservation practice and treatments through research and analysis
• Monitor the museum’s display and storage environments to ensure a stable and sustainable environment for all collection objects
• Support the museum to implement best practices required for long-term preservation of its collections
• Contribute to the museum’s comprehensive reference for storage, handling, display, and access
• Provide appropriate care of all objects that are temporarily within M+’s care
• Join and lead collaborative research projects and initiatives to examine and adopt conservation strategies at the highest standards

M+ promotes respect for intellectual property rights. We seek to obtain copyright-holders’ permission in advance of publishing images and other content on our non-commercial website.

On a case-by-case basis, when rights-holders cannot be identified or their whereabouts remain unknown, M+ is obliged to strike a balance between upholding the rights of consent of creators and copyright-holders and advancing the knowledge of its collections of visual culture among the general public.

If you are a rights-holder of specific material presented on this website and have concerns about permissions, please email [email protected], introducing yourself and providing the following information:

• Your contact details
• The full details of the material’s creator
• The exact and full web address (URL) where you found the material
• A statement that, under penalty of perjury, you are the rights-holder or are an authorised representative (please note that you must be able to prove this statement)

If you have contact details of copyright-holders in this list, please email us.