Art Basel Hong Kong: are international collectors back? Will Hong Kong recover as an arts destination? Find out at Post’s March 23 panel discussion
- Art Basel Hong Kong 2023 is the first to be held since Covid restrictions were lifted, and some are asking if Hong Kong is losing its edge as an arts hub
- An expert panel hosted by the Post will discuss the fair and issues such as Hong Kong’s art market role on March 23. Join us or watch a live-stream on Instagram
Art Basel Hong Kong has special significance this year. As the first edition since the city reopened its borders, the fair, which runs from March 21 to 25, is very much seen as a barometer of where the city stands as an international art market.
Once unquestionably the biggest and most important contemporary art fair in Asia, Art Basel Hong Kong took a massive hit when the city endured an unprecedented period of isolation, with daily arrivals at its airport dwindling to just hundreds from an average of 200,000 people in 2019.
The number of galleries taking part in the fair plunged and non-local collectors were absent for three years (though they still bought artworks online). Frustrated by pandemic restrictions, some international galleries and auction houses pulled out of the city altogether.
There has been much talk of Seoul, Singapore and Tokyo becoming more attractive, especially when Hong Kong can no longer boast an absence of political censorship – that changed when the national security law was introduced in 2020.
In fact, in 2020, before the city closed its borders, there were art dealers who threatened to boycott the fair in part because their artists did not want to show in Hong Kong because of the police crackdown on the 2019 protests.
Is that all water under the bridge? The number of booths this year is 177, a far cry from the 242 in 2019, even with the mass protests outside the fair venue.
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This year’s show remains larger than most fairs in Tokyo and Seoul, but new fairs, such as Frieze Seoul in South Korea and Art SG in Singapore, have been launched.
The big test will come when Art Basel Hong Kong and Art Central, the satellite fair taking place during the same week, open their doors at the Hong Kong Exhibition and Convention Centre, in Wan Chai.
The invitation-only VIP preview of both fairs on March 21 will be a good indicator of demand. Will we see the most powerful people in the art world return? What art is on show and what is being bought? What do the fairs say about Hong Kong’s relevance in the discussion about how Asia is disrupting the global art market?
And then there’s the international debut of M+, which opened in 2021 when people couldn’t come to the city. How will the opinion leaders of the art world find “Asia’s first global museum of contemporary visual culture”?
The South China Morning Post will ask all these questions, and more, in a March 23 panel discussion with two people who will definitely be able to spot all the major international collectors and dealers at the fair – Josh Baer, founder of the influential industry newsletter and art advisory service The Baer Faxt, and curator and art dealer Jeffrey Deitch, who is responsible for putting together an exhibition of more than 100 pieces of street art and graffiti opening in Hong Kong this week.
The panel discussion titled “Hong Kong, Long Time No See”, co-presented by the South China Morning Post and The Baer Faxt at Art Basel Hong Kong, will be held at Exchange Circle, Level 3, Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre, 1 Expo Drive, Wan Chai, on March 23, 12.30pm to 1pm.
