And in the wider economy, the city’s stock market is struggling to come back from the pandemic and political crackdown, with the benchmark Hang Seng index falling for a fourth consecutive year. But a forecasted economic slowdown in the mainland, due in part to a cratering property market, is already impacting the special administrative region’s art scene, evidenced by disappointing November 2023 auction sale results in Hong Kong. Hong Kong has long benefited from trade with China. In 2023, Hong Kong art exports rose nearly 60% in the first quarter compared with the same quarter in 2022, according to the Art Basel UBS global collecting survey.īut stormy seas may lie ahead. The city’s art market is, by some key measures, bouncing back from the pandemic. (Phillips opened its expanded Hong Kong headquarters last year). Indeed, votes of confidence in Hong Kong are evidenced in Hauser & Wirth recently relocating in the city to a bigger space, and both Sotheby’s and Christie’s lauching new Hong Kong salerooms and headquarters this year. I really believe that, now more than ever, people are going to see Hong Kong not just as the city of Art Basel Hong Kong or M+, but as the cultural hub of Asia.”Īrt Basel Hong Kong director Angelle Siyang-Le This pace of development is such a huge testament to the maturation of Hong Kong’s art ecosystem. Now, we not only have the Hong Kong Museum of Art and Tai Kwun, but also two new influential landmarks sitting alongside one another in West Kowloon: M+ for contemporary art-which reported 2,034,331 visitors for the whole of 2022-and the Palace Museum for antiquities. “When we launched the fair in 2013, there were no world-class museums. “The Hong Kong art scene has grown exponentially since the pandemic,” she says. Hong Kong’s resilience through the turbulent years of the Covid-19 pandemic is emphasised by the fair’s director, Angelle Siyang-Le, who was appointed in 2022. Also in Insights, the Taipei-based PTT Space will present works by the late painter De-Jinn Shiy, whose portraits from the 1950s to the 70s exploring queer desire are pioneering in East Asia. Meanwhile the Insights section, focused on artists from the Asia-Pacific region, will welcome the first-time exhibitor √K Contemporary, from Tokyo, which is bringing works by Nankoku Hidai, one of the earliest and most influential figures in 20th-century avant-garde calligraphy. Among the newcomers in the Discoveries section, devoted to solo presentations, is Fitzpatrick from Paris, which will show portrait paintings by Arthur Marie. Joining them are 24 galleries exhibiting for the first time at the Hong Kong fair.
While a handful of leading galleries that took part in 2019 are not returning, including Marian Goodman, Sean Kelly and Goodman, many major international names will be showing again, such as Sprüth Magers, Modern Art and Lisson.
This year’s exhibitor count is 37% higher than last year, and one more than the 242 that participated in 2019. After four years of hiatus or operating at reduced scale, Art Basel Hong Kong is back to its pre-pandemic size, with 243 galleries from 40 countries taking part in its forthcoming edition.