M+ Curator Aric Chen Wins Design Prize

The Design Prize has announced that Aric Chen, lead curator for design and architecture at M+, Hong Kong’s museum for visual culture, has won the Design Curator and Design Critic award at this year’s first edition of the prize. The Design Prize is a newly launched annual awards program in Milan, Italy, under the organization of the media outlets designboom and Abitare and in cooperation with the city of Milan. It aims to recognize global excellence in design. The first ten recipients were selected by an international jury from more than a total of 750 nominees under different categories.

Awardees were given trophies with designs based on the Madonnina, a landmark in Milan where the award ceremony took place. While receiving the award, Chen stated: “It’s an honor to have received this award on behalf of the design and architecture team at M+ and our colleagues at the museum. I’m grateful to our peers for recognizing 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.”

The executive director of M+, Suhanya Raffel, also commented on Chen’s win by saying: “Aric has been an integral member of M+, where he spent the past years leading the M+ design and architecture programs 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.”

Chen has been the lead curator for design and architecture at M+ since 2012. Previously, he was the creative director of Beijing Design Week. At M+, Chen has initiated the expansion of the design and architecture collection, which includes approximately 3,000 works. The overall collection currently comprises more than 6,000 objects. He has also led curatorial teams for exhibitions including “NEONSIGNS.HK” and “Shifting Objectives: Design from the M+ Collection” and has organized programs including the annual “M+ / Design Trust Research Fellowship” as well as the upcoming “Rethinking Pei: A Centenary Symposium,” which will take place in December.

Je-Seung Lee is an editorial intern at ArtAsiaPacific.

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