His works are in over 150 public collections across more than 20 countries, including: The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), New York; The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; Art Institute of Chicago; Musée National d’Art Moderne, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris; Tate Modern, London; and National Institute of Fine Arts, Beijing. In 1994, he received Japan’s Imperial Prize for Painting, personally given to him by the Emperor. In 2002 he was elected to the Académie des Beaux-Arts in Paris and he was made Grand Officer of the Legion of Honour, the highest order of merit in France, by then-President Jacques Chirac in 2006. His work has been widely exhibited around the world including an exhibition at the Grand Palais in Paris in 1981 and a retrospective of his paintings in 1998 which travelled to Shanghai, Beijing and Canton. In 2016 Asia Society Museum in New York presented the artist’s first U.S. retrospective since the 1960’s. In 2018, the Musée d’Art moderne de la Ville de Paris (MAMVP) paid tribute to Zao Wou-Ki with a major exhibition Space is Silence (on view until 6 January, 2019).