An opening date has been set for the long-anticipated M+ Museum in Hong Kong after years of delays.

The $750 million project from Herzog & de Meuron is being heralded as Asia’s largest and most significant center for contemporary visual art and was seen as the centerpiece of Hong Kong’s West Kowloon Cultural District when it was first announced in 2003.

Construction wrapped earlier in the year on the 700,000-square-foot facility which houses a 6,400-piece collection of contemporary art, media, and architecture across 33 galleries with a host of other amenities that includes three cinema-sized theaters and a research center.

Featuring a terracotta-clad facade with a south-facing LED display, the museum forms a T-shape with a podium and tower that stands over a triple-height installation space meant to give visitors a vertical orientation to the new museum.

The museum also stirred controversy recently after it removed a significant Ai Weiwei photograph depicting Tiananmen Square from its website prior to the opening announcement in a move mandated by administrators in Beijing, according to an op-ed published by the 64-year-old artist and architect Monday.

Hong Kong has, since the end of the 90s, become a mainstay in the art world, though recent crackdowns by the mainland Chinese government have forced some of the city’s artists into exile, raising questions about whether it can retain its status as a regional standard-bearer long-term relative to other up-and-coming art capitals like Taiwan and Seoul.

Now, with investments in cultural infrastructure re-establishing its name, the museum joins the two-year-old Xiqu Center and Rocco Design’s forthcoming Hong Kong Palace Museum to complete the first batch of what has been called “the world’s largest cultural development” overlooking the harbor. 

Hong Kongers will enjoy a year’s worth of free admission to the museum when it opens with a slate of six exhibitions that includes a four-chapter exploration of the city’s development from 1960 titled “Hong Kong: Here and Beyond.” 

More information about the new M+ building can be found here.