Superstar' architect I. M. Pei gets first retrospective in Hong Kong
M+ Gallery presents a hoard of previously unseen material even by his architect sons
By RON GLUCKMAN
Nikkei
HONG KONG -- I.M. Pei was the architectural force behind some of the world's most renowned buildings -- high-rises like the Bank of China tower in Hong Kong and public spaces like the East Building at the National Gallery of Art in Washington. His designs were challenging and diverse, ranging from the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in the U.S. city of Cleveland to the Museum of Islamic Art in Doha.
Pei is probably best known for his controversial but iconic glass and metal pyramid at the Louvre Museum in Paris.
This body of work makes Pei the top Chinese architect of modern times. Yet there has never been a comprehensive career retrospective. "We always tried to get him to do it," said Sandi Pei, his son, an architect who partnered with his brother Didi (who died in December) at New York-based Pei Architects, where their father continued consulting and working almost until his death at 102 five years ago. "He always refused," Sandi added.
Until now.
"I.M. Pei: Life is Architecture" opened on June 29 at M+ Gallery in Hong Kong and will run until January 2025. The exhibition is massive, filling 1,600 sq. meters of the modern art museum in Hong Kong's West Kowloon Cultural District, a $2.8 billion arts area built on 40 hectares of reclaimed waterfront land.
Neatly arranged in six huge rooms, the exhibition allows visitors to revisit Pei's remarkable career, viewing more than 400 items, including drawings, project models and a wealth of material that has never been seen before -- even by his two sons, both architects.
A sweeping tribute to an architectural giant, it is also a homecoming of sorts for Pei, who was born in nearby Guangzhou in southern China but grew up in Hong Kong and later, Shanghai. He moved to the U.S. in 1935 to study at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University, and spent the rest of his life there, winning the prestigious Pritzker Prize for architecture in 1983.
His designs have been heralded for their astute amalgamation of some of the best of Western and Asian influences, said Shirley Surya, curator of design and architecture at M+, adding that the retrospective is the most important exhibition in the museum's history, involving a decade of planning and research.
She and co-curator Aric Chen began discussions with the Pei family in 2014. After approval in 2016, they started scouring archives and reviewing documents, drawings and models going all the way back to Pei's student years. Surya estimates that 70% of the exhibition material has never been seen in public.
Together with Chen, they bored to the very beginning of Pei's career -- and before; his first student designs and little-known early work for New York real estate magnate William Zeckendorf illuminate how Pei began, step-by-step, to develop his distinctive style.
"For me, it's really great to learn so much about his early life," said Chen, who is now director of the Nieuwe Instituut -- the Netherlands national museum of architecture -- in Rotterdam. From 2012 to 2018, he was the lead curator for design and architecture at M+ and was instrumental in arranging the Pei retrospective. Of note is the showcase dealing with Pei's little-seen phase as a real estate designer after he received his architecture degree from the Harvard Graduate School of Design in 1946.
"People don't really know how he spent so much time in real estate," said Chen. "That was quite unusual for a Harvard graduate." Pei worked for Zeckendorf for seven years before establishing I.M. Pei & Associates, in 1955, I.M. Pei & Partners in the mid-1960s, and Pei Cobb Freed & Partners in 1989.
"In the early days [of M+] we wanted to build our collection and plan major exhibits," Chen says. "I.M. Pei was on our list of architects we wanted to have in our collection."
Pei's unexpected approval for the retrospective came at "just the right time," he said, explaining that Pei was in his late 90s at the time, and semi-retired. "It was lucky timing for us."
Sandi Pei, visiting Hong Kong for the opening of the retrospective, said he was equally surprised by his father's sudden agreement to an exhibition that his sons had urged for years. His father had continued consulting on projects with his sons, "but at this point in his career, he was finished with work," he said. "It was the time."
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After viewing the exhibition for the first time, Sandi Pei marveled not only at the comprehensive treatment of his father's architectural designs, but the details of his life, including much that was new to him, such as letters from I.M. Pei and his family in China that had been held in Chinese archives.
"It's very important that this is in China, and especially important to be in Hong Kong," he said. "My father moved to Hong Kong from Guangzhou when he was 1, [and] went to school here," he says. "Even though he had such a successful career, he's barely known in China."
The retrospective comes at a crucial time for Hong Kong, where controversial security laws enacted in recent years have heightened concerns over growing restrictions on wide-ranging freedoms once enjoyed by the bustling Asian city when it was under British rule before its return to China in 1997.
During the Art Basel exhibition in late March in Hong Kong, media attention focused on concerns about artistic constraints and reports of an exodus of artists from the city, a global art center where many of the world's top art auctions are held.
"It's a tough time for Hong Kong, and art there," said Eric Wear, an art writer and historian who formerly headed the Hong Kong chapter of the International Association of Art Critics but now lives in Portugal.
"People don't want to say anything that can be perceived as critical, and that's what is happening with artists, too."
The atmosphere, he said, has become cautious, heightening self-censorship. So much art in Hong Kong is dependent on government grants and support, he added, that creativity was at risk. "It's similar to the media; censorship exists because of the threat of censorship."
There have been few reports of government censorship, although the plug was pulled last year on a video artwork projected on a screen outside a department store after slowed-down recordings revealed that U.S. artist Patrick Amadon had included subliminal references to pro-democracy protests.
In 2021, M+ was criticized over reports that its website censored an image created by the controversial Chinese artist Ai Weiwei. Ai, who was jailed in China before going into exile in Europe, made a collection of portraits showing him raising his middle figure in various locations, including in front of Tiananmen Square in Beijing. It was removed from an early M+ website.
Yet, in many ways, the Pei exhibition also serves as a timely reminder of the role that Hong Kong has long filled as a bridge between China and the Western world. Galleries like M+ are designed, and endowed, to take on massive projects and promote discussion of crucial issues in contemporary art.
In Pei's case, the six themed rooms are organized to illuminate not only his accomplishments but also his struggles. There is ample space, and no better place to reconsider his relationship with China.
There is surprisingly little of Pei's work in mainland China, but what is there is noteworthy -- beginning with the Fragrant Hill Hotel outside Beijing, completed in 1982.
The Chinese government initially wanted a flashy building like Pei's Bank of China tower in Hong Kong, to emphasize China's rising power. Instead, Pei designed a low-rise building that borrowed from the white walls and gray tiles of central China's vernacular buildings and arranged the complex around courtyards To the frustration of the architect, it has remained largely off-limits to visitors, according to Sandi Pei.
Yet Chen noted that the building exemplified Pei's use of Chinese elements in his designs, including rocks relocated from the Stone Forest in Yunnan province, more than 2,500 kilometers away.
Chen also pointed out that Pei is one of the few top architects to have completed significant buildings in China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. A museum he designed in Suzhou, his family's ancestral home near Shanghai, has been widely acclaimed since its opening in 2006.
Even in its first days after opening, many visitors to the retrospective appeared thrilled to find such a high-quality exhibition of work by such an inspirational figure in Hong Kong.
"He really influenced me," said William Lim, a prominent local architect who praised not only the displays explaining famous creations such as the Louvre pyramid, but the many insights offered into the life of the architect.
Pei was "a superstar of the superstars," said Lim. "Hong Kong should be proud of what M+ accomplished. This is the best exhibit of architecture that I've ever seen."
This story ran in Nikkei, online and in the magazine in July 2024