CHANEL and M+ extend their partnership: Pioneering Visions launches ahead of Sarah Sze’s 2027 presentation
The three-year extension expands support to exhibitions, public events and digital collection stories. Distinguish existing images from future exhibitions and film restoration plans.
What practical difference can a fashion brand’s museum partnership make for audiences? On October 21, 2026, M+ announced a three-year extension of its collaboration with CHANEL, which becomes a Lead Partner of the museum. Support expands from moving image to exhibitions, public events and digital content about the collection. The new Pioneering Visions initiative already has an online hub, giving the partnership a direct entry point for reading and viewing.
Pioneering Visions begins with artists and the collection
The initiative focuses on creators transforming art and visual culture, with an emphasis on Hong Kong, Greater China, Asia and Asia-focused practices. Its formats extend beyond a single exhibition to gallery and online content, talks, screenings and workshops. Audiences can start with an artist’s materials, images or interview, then bring those ideas back into a physical exhibition rather than trying to complete everything in one visit.
The hub currently brings together articles and videos from different years, including a 2025 interview about Heidi Lau’s work with clay and a 2023 feature on Yu Ji’s materials. Those dates matter: a new initiative does not mean every artwork and interview was newly produced in 2026. It is more like a newly mapped reading route, connecting existing content with forthcoming presentations and allowing exploration at one’s own pace.
Sarah Sze’s Centrifuge opens in 2027
An announced presentation is Sarah Sze: Centrifuge, which the official exhibition page lists as opening on February 5, 2027 in the second-floor Focus Gallery. Made in 2017, the work combines found and fabricated objects with analogue and digital technologies, projecting images onto the installation and surrounding space. This is a future presentation; published photographs of an earlier installation should not be treated as evidence that the Hong Kong exhibition has already opened.
The photograph shows a delicate framework and numerous small images extending upwards, with objects accumulated on the floor and light scattered across surrounding surfaces. It resists a single fixed focal point, shifting “watching images” from one screen in front of the viewer to a process of distributing attention through space. The initiative’s page also uses 2025 exhibition photographs of Heidi Lau’s Pavilion Procession and Kimsooja’s To Breathe, offering different examples of ceramic forms and light changing architectural space.
Heidi Lau’s Pavilion Procession in the Sigg Prize 2025 exhibition.Kimsooja’s To Breathe (2025), installed in Dream Rooms: Environments by Women Artists 1950s–Now.
Support for moving image and restored films continues
The extension does not end the existing moving-image support. The partnership began in 2023 and encompasses a curatorial position, film restoration, collecting and public programming. M+ says nine restored feature films will return to its cinema during the M+ Restored Festival in November 2026, while a new cycle of six Asian film restorations is planned for 2027. These are different dates and scopes, so the nine and six should not be added into one current screening list.
Audiences can now visit the Pioneering Visions hub, choose a video or article, and consider how artists handle materials, images and time before following details of the 2027 exhibition. The value of a partnership announcement extends beyond the brand name to whether content is easy to find, existing works gain new understanding and future programmes allow continued participation. Identifying those practical entry points helps turn sponsorship news into a personal cultural itinerary.
