According to the art market tracker ArtTactic, Hong Kong recently overtook London to become the second-biggest contemporary art auction market in the world. The city’s surging secondary market is part of a wider commercial art scene that includes outposts of many top-tier international galleries and a highly successful iteration of the Art Basel fair, which runs annually in March.
This strength and depth have reinforced Hong Kong’s reputation as Asia’s art capital – a rise to prominence underpinned not only by the city’s long-standing role as a bridge between east and west, and its robust financial and legal systems, but also its connectivity and hospitality. “Hong Kong is such a great place because it has an active art scene. It is also a strategic location. As the gateway to Asia, you have family offices that are operating here with rising art advisory demand,” says Masumi Shinohara, Managing Director of Sotheby’s Asia.
Galleries, art fairs and auction houses
Hong Kong’s growing stature in the secondary art market has been driven by the big hitters of the global auction scene, all of whom are active in the city. Bonhams operates out of a 19,000-sq ft space on Six Pacific Place; Phillips has a huge space designed by Herzog & de Meuron and LAAB Architects in the West Kowloon Cultural District, and, in 2024, Sotheby’s opened Sotheby’s Maison in the Landmark, a vast gallery and retail space that houses museum-quality exhibitions.
Hong Kong is the art hub in Asia for Sotheby’s and one of their top three locations. One of the most valuable works that was sold globally at Sotheby’s, a Claude Monet that was sold for $65.5 million, was in Hong Kong in 2024. “We were the first international auction house to open in Asia,” says Shinohara “In just five decades here, our business and the collector base has grown tremendously, and now it is one of the global key selling locations.”
The city is also home to a thriving network of commercial galleries – some homegrown, others belonging to names on the global art scene. The city’s oldest contemporary space, Alisan Fine Arts (long a champion of artists from the Chinese diaspora) recently invested in a vast new space in Hong Kong’s Aberdeen district. It includes a contemporary take on the salon: a “lived environment” in which artists and collectors gather to exchange ideas. The city’s status as an art hub is underlined by the presence of all four of the international “megadealers”: Hauser & Wirth, Gagosian, Pace and David Zwirner.
A global connector
For Patricia Crockett, Senior Director at David Zwirner, Hong Kong, the city is an obvious base for Asian operations. “Hong Kong has long been the leading art market in Asia, and also functions as a gateway to the west. The city has a fantastic base of local collectors who are curious and passionate about art, and the great thing is that this collector base is continuously growing.”
Hong Kong’s cultural calendar is built around Art Month, which takes place every March and sees the city host two simultaneous fairs, Art Basel and Art Central. The former is a guaranteed roll call of household names, while the latter is focused on emerging Asian artists alongside distinguished artists from around the world. For Angelle Siyang-Le, the director of Art Basel Hong Kong, the fair has firmly established its own identity. “The Hong Kong show focuses on emerging, mid-career and established Asian artists. In terms of medium, you see a lot of textiles, which reflects the city’s rich history of textile production. You also see a lot of large-scale installations that explore digital concepts in physical form. This kind of hybridity is particularly attractive to the region’s younger generations of collectors.”
For Siyang-Le, the city has everything an art fair needs to thrive. She cites Hong Kong’s well-established legal and financial system, as well as its mature logistics systems. “And, of course, it’s a financial hub, which contributes enormously to the art trade,” she says. “Art Basel is the platform to connect the artistic world to the corporate world.”
Connectivity and hospitality
But Hong Kong’s emergence as an art world powerhouse is not all about its professional systems. In part, it is a product of it being such an attractive place to visit. With direct flights to more than 200 destinations worldwide, it pulls in collectors from all over the region and beyond. This kind of connectivity is a boon for the commercial galleries, as Crockett notes: “We have collectors coming in from south-east Asia, Korea, Japan, and also America and Europe, all throughout the year.”
It doesn’t hurt that Hong Kong is home to world-class hotels and many three-star Michelin restaurants. But perhaps its recent emergence as an art-world leader is even overtaking its gastronomic celebrity. “I think collectors and the rich cultural landscape go hand in hand,” says Crockett. “Over the past few years, we’ve seen Hong Kong continue to establish itself on the international stage with the opening of ambitious museums like M+, the Palace Museum and Tai Kwun.”
The city’s status as Asia’s art capital is now firmly established. “Hong Kong is in a league of its own,” says Shinohara at Sotheby’s Asia “There’s no other city in the region that can rival its provision of the logistical and financial infrastructure necessary to conduct a world class business for art here,” he adds. “The art scene and collecting scene will continue to thrive and to grow alongside with the public interest and, in art and culture.”
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