While waiting for the major retrospective being prepared by the M+ Museum in Hong Kong for December 2025, in collaboration with the Zao Wou-Ki Foundation, it is still possible to see works by Zao Wou-Ki in collective exhibitions around the world.

To celebrate the 50th anniversary of its opening, the Hirshhorn Museum & Garden in Washington (DC) has redeployed its very rich permanent collections in an exhibition entitled “Revolutions. Art from the Hirshhorn Collection. 1860-1960”, to be seen from March 22nd  2024 to April 20th  2025. This exhibition presents 208 works by 117 artists, as well as counterpoints by 19 contemporary artists.

This exhibition is an opportunity to discover one of the richest collections of post-war American and European art, including, among others Francis Bacon, Alexander Calder, Helen Frankenthaler, Arshile Gorky, Hans Hofmann, Jasper Johns, Willem de Kooning, Wifredo Lam, Morris Louis, Joan Mitchell, Joan Miró, Georgia O’Keeffe, Jackson Pollock, Robert Rauschenberg, Mark Rothko, Clyfford Still, Rufino Tamayo.

Zao Wou-Ki’s painting dated 1958, purchased by Josph H. Hirshhorn in 1959 at the Kootz Gallery and donated to the museum in 1966, is exhibited between Delaware Gap painted in 1958 by Franz Kline and Covenant, painted in 1949 by Barnett Newman.

From January 22 to March 30, 2025, the Guangdong Museum of Art presents the exhibition ‘Interwoven visions. Exhibition of French and Chinese Academicians of the Académie des Beaux-Arts’. The chosen title reflects the fertile exchanges, reciprocal influences, intersection of civilisations and the crossing of artistic languages created by the encounter between modern Western art and the Eastern artistic tradition.

The Académie des Beaux-Arts, one of France’s most historic and influential art institutions, has had a profound impact on the development of art around the world, particularly in China. For this exhibition, a selection of over 90 works by 11 Chinese and French masters from the Académie des Beaux-Arts invites visitors on a journey between East and West. The artists on show include Zao Wou-Ki, Chu Teh-Chun, Wu Weishan, Jean Cardot, Claude Abeille and Pierre-Yves Trémois.

A Chinese ink (1998) by Zao Wou-Ki is featured in the exhibition

From January 17 to March 23, 2025, the National Museum of History in Taipei presents ‘Hidden Gems: 30th Anniversary Exhibition of the Chin Wan Society’s Collection’. This year, to mark its 70th anniversary, the National Museum of History is renewing its collaboration with the Ching Wan Society, which brings together Taiwan’s leading collectors renowned for the exceptional quality and variety of their collections.

The exhibition presents a selection of traditional Chinese paintings, Western art and antiques in the unique format usually adopted by the Taipei Museum, which aims to combine Chinese artistic heritage with modern and contemporary Western art. 

In particular, visitors will discover three important works by Zao Wou-Ki in which figuration gradually gives way to abstraction: Bateaux au port, 1952, oil on canvas, 130 x 162 cm ; Untitled (Lacustres), 1955, oil on canvas, 60 x 73 cm and 20.03.60, 1960, oil on canvas, 130 x 162 cm.

From February 1st to December 28, 2025, the exhibition ‘Enrichissement des collections 2015-2025’ presents a selection of around sixty works that have entered the collections of the Musée de l’Hospice Saint-Roch in Issoudun (France) over the last ten years. Most of these recent acquisitions have come from donations.

Among the works on display are two paintings by the American artist Joan Mitchell, from the private collection of Zao Wou-Ki (1920-2013), donated by his wife Françoise Marquet-Zao. This exceptional donation, made in October 2015, comprised 90 works (paintings, works on paper and sculptures) by 58 famous artists, most of whom were entering the museum’s collections for the first time, including Paul Klee, Antonin Artaud and Alberto Giacometti.

In 2016, a temporary exhibition crowned this event by presenting the entire donation to the public at the Musée de l’Hospice Saint-Roch. At the same time, a catalogue was published by Flammarion: L’Homme des deux rives: Zao Wou-Ki collectionneur, Paris, Flammarion (296 p.). Foreword by Jean-Paul Desroches, texts by Gilles Chazal, Sophie Cazé, Éric Lefebvre and Françoise Marquet. Notes by Pierre Alechinsky, Sophie Cazé and Yann Hendgen.