A designer enters the galleries
The selection spans paintings, sculpture, drawings and ceramics across Picasso’s long working life. Smith’s contribution is the exhibition’s visual setting: colour, pattern and the relationships between artworks and the space around them. It follows his collaboration with the Paris museum for its 2023 Picasso anniversary presentation.
Child Playing with a Toy Truck provides the image for a co-creation wall in the programme. It brings a specific example of Picasso’s recurring interest in children into Smith’s participatory exhibition setting.
Picasso’s movement between media makes the pairing interesting. A painter’s drawn line can become a sculptural outline; an everyday object can acquire another identity; ceramics carry painting onto a curved, usable surface. Smith’s career has likewise treated colour and familiar objects as sources of invention. The connection is legible without requiring a fashion collection beside every painting.
A winter of French loans
MAP is placing the Picasso exhibition beside The Wonder of Patterns, its collaboration with the Louvre opening earlier in December. The two shows offer quite different material histories within the same museum: Picasso’s 20th-century experiments and decorative arts from India, Iran and the Ottoman world. They also underline how large international museum partnerships have become part of Shanghai’s regular exhibition calendar.
Dates and venue
22 December 2025–3 May 2026 at Museum of Art Pudong / 浦东美术馆, 2777 Binjiang Avenue, Pudong / 浦东新区滨江大道2777号. Exhibition admission is handled through MAP’s official ticket channels. Shanghai is the opening stop of the international tour and its only stop in China.