Two interesting public talks were held in Hong Kong last week amid the art auction frenzy: one by Judith Dolkart, the chief curator of The Barnes Foundation in the US; and another by Giuseppe Eskenazi, a London-based dealer of Chinese antiquities, who has just released a book charting his 50-year career.
It's good to know that the auction season is not all about buying and selling, investing and speculating.
Dolkart's lecture, part of Christie's firt Art Forum series, looked at the evolution of the impressive collection of the Barnes Foundation.
Between 1912 and 1951, American chemist Albert Barnes assembled one of the finest collections of impressionist, post-impressionist and early modern paintings in the world.
This world-class collection - which includes works by Paul Cezanne, Pablo Picasso, Henri Matisse, Amedeo Modigliani, Pierre-Auguste Renoir and Vincent van Gogh - had been tucked away in the owner's leafy home in Merion, Pennsylvania until May this year, when it found a new home in Fairmount Park in downtown Philadelphia.
What is fascinating about this transfer is that, despite being housed in a new building, the art is arranged in the precisely the same way that it had been exhibited at the old site. So the collection illustrates not only how Barnes' taste in art changed over time, but how he wanted the works - some are clustered together on one wall - to be viewed. (Christie's sales will be held at the end of next month).