News: the West Kowloon Cultural District Authority (WKCDA) has appointed Asian curator Doryun Chong as chief curator of Hong Kong's forthcoming M+ museum of visual culture.

Mr Doryun Chong, a respected and experienced curator will join the M+ museum team in September, which already includes art and design curator Aric Chen, and will assist executive director Dr Lars Nittve on the museum's future.

"We have been searching for a right chief curator for years," said Nittve. "With his extensive knowledge and understanding of the contemporary art scene, not the least in Asia, Doryun is an extraordinary addition to our growing team," he added.

Since 2009, Chong has been the associate curator of painting and sculpture at The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) in New York. Prior to MoMA, he has held curatorial positions at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis and at the Asian Art Museum of San Francisco. He was the coordinator for the Korean Pavilion exhibition at the 2001 Venice Biennale as well as a co-curator of the 2003 exhibition Time After Time: Asia and Our Moment at Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco.

'I am extremely excited about M+'s vision of creating a unique twentieth and twenty-first century multidisciplinary institution of visual culture," said Chong.

"I look forward to working with the already accomplished, diverse team of curators at M+ to build a truly global museum that is also locally rooted and contribute to making Hong Kong a great cultural hub," he added.

Last month, Swiss architecture studio Herzog & de Meuron was selected to design the M+ museum, which is scheduled for completion in 2017.

It will be one of the first buildings to open in the West Kowloon Cultural District, which is being masterplanned by London office Foster + Partners and is set to contain a total of 17 cultural venues around a 14-hectare city park located in Hong Kong's Victoria Harbour.

In 2012, Dezeen spoke to M+ curator of art and design Aric Chen who told us that the M+ museum will take an unprecedented stance in "placing Asia at the centre" of design history, rather than on the periphery as western curators have done.

Listen to our full interview with Aric Chen »
Read more coverage of the West Kowloon Cultural District »

Photograph of Doryun Chong is by Martin Seck.