M+ opens at last, a museum of contemporary art and design for the world, amid a culture war in Hong Kong, where some wonder if it belongs

With M+, the timing is always off. After years of complaints that the museum of visual culture was taking too long to build, it is opening at long last – smack in the middle of a pandemic. A coterie of international VIPs would otherwise have flown into Hong Kong for the November 11 unveiling of the first Asian institution of its kind, but not when they have to spend up to 21 days in hotel quarantine.

A more consequential misalignment may have to do with last year’s introduction of the national security law in Hong Kong and an increasingly nationalistic model of governance in the special administrative region of China.

M+, described as a global museum for art, design, architecture and the moving image, was originally meant to open in 2017. The years of delay might be seen, in hindsight, as a historic opportunity squan­dered – a lost chance for a world-class museum to operate in a city that remained one of Asia’s freest, most open and most cosmopolitan for years after its return to Communist China. In those precious years, the museum could perhaps have begun to establish itself as a truly regional voice unhindered by national­istic considerations.

That’s the pessimistic view.

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Hong Kong’s world-class visual culture museum M+ to open in November

Hong Kong’s world-class visual culture museum M+ to open in November

As this striking, megalithic harbourfront monument opens its doors, it still aspires to be the lodestar of Hong Kong’s ambitions as an international cultural hub. Whether it will succeed will ultimately boil down to the same old question that has dogged it since the day it was proposed, by a government-appointed consultative committee in 2007: does it properly represent Hong Kong? And which Hong Kong does it represent?

Suhanya Raffel, M+ director since 2016, is cele­brating the opening as, for better or worse, a uniquely Hong Kong moment.