Critical Pairings: First Look at Design Society
By Brady Ng
Exterior of the Sea World Culture and Arts Center where Design Society is located, Shekou, 2017. Courtesy Design Society.
Design Society is the first museum-minded institution in China to dedicate its exhibition program to design. It’s also the result of the first ever collaboration between a major British cultural institution with a Chinese body—the state-owned conglomerate China Merchants Shekou Holdings. Three years into a five-year agreement between the two, Design Society opened its doors in Shekou on December 1. While the collaboration and circumstances sounded promising, it was mostly downhill from there.
