US-China trade war blamed for Pace Gallery Beijing’s closure, but is it last straw for art market? Two views
- It’s impossible to do business in China, American art market grandee Arne Glimcher said of his Pace Gallery closing in Beijing, with trade war the latest blow
- Another gallerist whose space in Beijing recently closed also cites threat of tariffs, but a veteran art dealer in China says business has never been so good
Art dealers are usually unrelentingly bullish about China’s market potential.
Sure, China has a lot of restrictions on doing business compared with the openness of Hong Kong, but Western galleries (most recently Perrotin, Lisson and Almine Rech) have continued to open branches there to promote their artists in a market with the second-highest number of billionaires in the world, and to capture any growth in domestic transactions that may arise from tighter restrictions on capital outflow.
So you don’t often hear outright dismissals of the potential of China’s art market like the fiery comments made this week by industry grandee Arne Glimcher, the American founder of Pace Gallery.
In an interview with ARTnews, an American art magazine, Glimcher said Pace had recently closed its 11-year-old, 22,000 sq ft gallery in Beijing’s 798 Art District because “it’s impossible to do business in mainland China right now and it has been for a while”.
The last straw, he said, was the trade war between the US and China, which has seen the Office of the US Trade Representative threaten to impose tariffs on imports to the United States of artwork and antiques from China.