Aric Chen of M+ receives top Design Curator award at the inaugural Design Prize in Milan

Aric Chen, Lead Curator for Design and Architecture at M+, has been named the winner in the Design Curator and Design Critic category of the newly-inaugurated Design Prize. Launched this year, The Design Prize is an annual awards programme, organised by the media outlets designboom and Abitare under the auspices of the City of Milan, that recognises excellence in design on a global scale. The 2017 recipients, in 10 categories, were selected by an international jury from over 750 nominees.
 

Chen was presented the award at a ceremony in Milan, one of the world’s leading centres for design. “It’s an honour to have received this award on behalf of the design and architecture team at M+ and our colleagues at the museum,” says Chen. “I’m grateful to our peers for recognising the work we’ve done, and for putting such faith in our efforts towards contributing new ways of seeing design and visual culture—and building a museum that Hong Kong can be proud of.”
 

“Aric has been an integral member of M+, where he spent the past years leading the M+ Design and Architecture programmes and collection development, playing an important part in building the foundation of the region’s new visual cultural museum. We are privileged to have such great talent on our team and congratulate Aric in achieving this recognition,” said Ms. Suhanya Raffel, Executive Director of M+.
 

Since joining M+ in 2012, Chen has led the museum’s efforts in building its design and architecture collection, which currently includes approximately 3,000 works out of a total of more than 6,000. He also led the curatorial teams for the exhibitions ‘Building M+: The Museum and Architecture Collection,’ ‘NEONSIGNS.HK,’ and most recently, ‘Shifting Objectives: Design from the M+ Collection’, and has initiated programmes including the annual ‘M+ / Design Trust Research Fellowship’ and the upcoming ‘Rethinking Pei: A Centenary Symposium’.
 

Previously the Creative Director of Beijing Design Week, Chen has been a regular contributor to publications such as the New York Times, Metropolis, and Architectural Record, and has served on numerous juries and advisory boards. He received his BA in Architecture and BA in Anthropology from the University of California at Berkeley, and his MA in the History of Design from the Cooper-Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum, in New York.
 

Remarks

About M+
Hong Kong’s museum for visual culture – encompassing twentieth and twenty-first century art, design, and architecture, and moving image from Hong Kong, China, Asia, and beyond – M+ will be one of the largest museums of 20th and 21st century visual culture in the world. Located adjacent to the park on the waterfront of the West Kowloon Cultural District, the museum building, designed by Herzog & de Meuron, is scheduled to open in 2019.
 

About West Kowloon Cultural District
Located on Hong Kong’s Victoria Harbour, the West Kowloon Cultural District is one of the largest cultural projects in the world. Its vision is to create a vibrant new cultural quarter for Hong Kong. With a complex of theatres, performance spaces, and M+, the West Kowloon Cultural District will produce and host world-class exhibitions, performances, and cultural events, as well as provide 23 hectares of public open space, including a two kilometre waterfront promenade.