M+ Museum to host ‘first major retrospective’ of I.M. Pei

The M+ Museum in Hong Kong is to open a new exhibition on the I.M Pei. Named I. M. Pei: Life is Architecture, the exhibition is described by the museum as “the first major retrospective” of the acclaimed architect,” which “appraises for the first time the work of one of the greatest architects of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.”

The exhibition will explore Pei’s work through six themes representing distinctive areas of focus throughout his career, namely: ‘Transcultural Foundations’, ‘Real Estate and Urban Redevelopment’, ‘Art and Civic Form’, ‘Material and Structural Innovation’, ‘Power, Politics, and Patronage’, and ‘Regenerating Cultural and Historical Archetypes’. The architect’s career will be charted through a selection of drawings, sketches, videos, models, photographs, and other archival documentation, including material on view for the first time.

To accompany the original material, the exhibition will include newly commissioned photographs of Pei’s buildings to “lend a contemporary lens” to the architect’s work. Architectural models of Pei’s built and unbuilt projects will also be presented, made in collaboration with architecture schools at The University of Hong Kong and The Chinese University of Hong Kong.

“Pei’s high-profile projects were realized over seven decades with an exceptionally wide geographic reach, including the National Gallery of Art East Building in Washington, D.C., modernization of the Grand Louvre in Paris, Bank of China Tower in Hong Kong, and Museum of Islamic Art in Doha,” the museum said about the architect. “These iconic landmarks solidified Pei’s position in architectural history and popular culture. His life and work weave together a tapestry of power dynamics, geopolitical complexities, cultural traditions, and the character of cities around the world, and his transcultural vision laid a foundation for the contemporary world.”

The exhibition will open on 29th June 2024 in the museum’s West Gallery.