Becoming Asia’s Art Market Hub: Comparing Singapore and Hong Kong

Abstract

The recent emergence of new regions in the global art market has been structured by hub cities that concentrate key actors, such as global auction houses, influential art fairs, and galleries. Both Singapore and Hong Kong have developed explicit strategies aimed at positioning themselves as Asia’s art market hub. This followed the steep rise of the Chinese art market, but also the general perception of Asia as the world’s most dynamic art market. While Hong Kong’s emergence derives from its status as gateway to the Chinese market, and has been driven by key global players, such as the auction houses Christies’ and Sotheby’s, the Art Basel fair, and mega-galleries, Singapore’s strategy has been driven by the state. At the end of the 2000s, the city identified the art market as a new growth sector, and proactively invested, by creating a cluster concentrating international galleries and supporting art fairs, art weeks, and new world-class cultural institutions. Based on comparative fieldwork, and interviews with actors of the Singapore and Hong Kong art markets, this article shows that the two cities’ distinct strategies have generated contrasted models of “cultural hubs”, and that they play complementary roles in the structuration of the region’s art market.

Disruption, Digitalization and Connectivity: Asia’s Art Market in Transformation

“…Claire McAndrew's art market research report (McAndrew 2013) captures the Asian art trade as an essential category in the distribution of the global art market from 1990 onward. Fieldwork-based research of commercial galleries (Kharchenkova 2017), education of creative practices in art schools (Chumley 2016), art fairs and auctions (Molho 2021), amongst other cultural institutions in Asia's rising art scene, suggest the importance of individual agency, creative entrepreneurship (DeBevoise 2014), and cross-cultural appropriations and links with the more established Western models of operation in the cognitive processes of institutionalization.…”

“…Svetlana Kharchenkova (2019) uses cross-border mimetic isomorphism to investigate the institutional differences, similarities, imitations, and appropriations of the institutional practices in China's contemporary art market benchmarked against those in the West while taking into consideration the indigenous context. As Jeremie Molho (2021) elaborates, comparing the Hong Kong and Singapore art markets shows contrasting approaches to positioning Asian cosmopolitan cities as art hubs (market-driven vs. state-led) from the perspectives of organizational configuration and infrastructure building.…”

“…The Western art market takes it as a model for China and Asia's art hub and has paid great attention to its internationalization in the art marketplace. The influx and soaring of galleries, art fairs, and auction houses set up good case studies of how Hong Kong's growing international art networks have increased both the volume and speed in promoting and facilitating the commodification of art (Molho 2021).…”