Jockey Club Community Outreach and Arts Education Programmes:
Pablo Picasso in 2025
Priority booking for M+ Members & Patrons from 18 to 19 Jan. Public registration available starting 20 Jan, 10:00.
Jockey Club Community Outreach and Arts Education Programmes:
Pablo Picasso in 2025
What new stories emerge when Picasso is viewed through today’s cultural perspectives?
In this free talk, Cécile Debray, President, Musée national Picasso-Paris, will explore the artist’s pivotal role in shaping modernism and post-modernism along with his lesser-known reception in Black American, Latin American, and African scenes. She will also delve into the more contentious aspects of his work that re-emerged with the MeToo movement and discuss the feminist and postcolonial viewpoints that inform exhibitions of his work today.
Doryun Chong, M+ Artistic Director and Chief Curator and the co-curator of The Hong Kong Jockey Club Series: Picasso for Asia—A Conversation, will give an overview of the exhibition and an introduction to the talk. Following the lecture, Debray will then be joined by Suhanya Raffel, M+ Museum Director, in a discussion about Picasso for Asia: A Conversation and what this new exhibition adds to the continued re-framing of Picasso and what it means for M+ and MnPP.
Exclusively sponsored by The Hong Kong Jockey Club Charities Trust, the talk will be conducted in English with simultaneous interpretation available in Cantonese. Click on ‘Register’ to sign up for this free talk. Tickets to the special exhibition are available for purchase here.
About the Speakers
Nominated as President of the Musée national Picasso-Paris in November 2021, Cécile Debray, General Curator of Heritage, was Director of the Musée de l'Orangerie from May 2017 to November 2021. She was in charge of the modern collections at the Musée National d'Art Moderne / Centre Pompidou from 2008 to 2017, scientific adviser to the General Administrator of the RMN, in charge of programming at the Galeries Nationales du Grand Palais, from 2005 to 2008, curator at the Musée d’Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris from 2000 to 2005, and director of the Châteauroux museums from 1997 to 2000.
Portrait of Cécile Debray. © Bernard Martinez
Suhanya Raffel is the Museum Director of M+ in Hong Kong’s West Kowloon Cultural District since her appointment in 2016. She leads M+ and oversees all museum activities, including acquisitions, programming, collections care, development, research, institutional collaborations, and museum operations. Since joining M+, Raffel has led the museum’s mission, broadening its international reach and championing its deep connection with its local community. Raffel is the President of CIMAM, the International Committee for Museums and Collections of Modern Art (2023–2025), and she has served on the CIMAM Board since 2016.
Portrait of Suhanya Raffel. M+, Hong Kong
Doryun Chong is the Artistic Director and Chief Curator of M+, and a co-curator of The Hong Kong Jockey Club Series: Picasso for Asia—A Conversation, co-organised by M+ and Musée national Picasso-Paris. He was appointed as the inaugural Chief Curator of M+ in 2013 and served as Deputy Director, Curatorial from 2016 to September 2024. For over a decade, Chong has overseen all curatorial activities and programmes at M+, including collections, exhibitions, learning and public programmes, publications, and digital initiatives across the museum's three main disciplinary areas of design and architecture, moving image, and visual art. He has led the transformative growth of the M+ Collections and steered the museum’s curatorial direction and pedagogical practices, foregrounding the transcultural and transnational narratives of twentieth- and twenty-first-century global visual culture from a uniquely Asian perspective rooted in Hong Kong.
Portrait of Doryun Chong. M+, Hong Kong
Title Sponsor
Image at top: Pablo Picasso. Figures by the Sea, 1931. Oil on canvas. Musée national Picasso-Paris. © Succession Picasso 2025. Image: © GrandPalaisRmn (Musée national Picasso-Paris) / Mathieu Rabeau
None of The Hong Kong Jockey Club Charities Trust, The Hong Kong Jockey Club, their respective affiliates or any other person involved in or related to the compilation of the contents herein (collectively, “the HKJC Parties”) makes any express or implied warranties or representations with respect to the accuracy, timeliness or completeness of the contents or as to the results that may be obtained by the use thereof. In no event shall any HKJC Party have any liability of any kind to any person or entity arising from or related to any actions taken or not taken as a result of any of the contents herein.