This new model involves a physical and operational expansion of the company that mirrors Asian collecting practices and tastes. In 2024, Sotheby’s will be relocating its offices and showrooms into a new 24,000 sq ft space in Chater House,Central, a move motivated by the need for a more flexible way of operating and conducting sales. Typically, auction houses have to rent halls in the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre or hotel function rooms to stage and conduct sales, which means they are “tied to selling everything all at once during two weeks of the year”, says Branczik.

Sotheby’s is not the only auction house expanding its presence in the city. Phillips inaugurated its new 50,000 sq ft space in March: six floors of offices, gallery spaces, a shop, café and VIP lounge in the building directly opposite the M+ museum. “The idea to create a permanent gallery allows us to hold year-round exhibitions and auctions,” says Jonathan Crockett, chairman, Asia, at Phillips. “Now, in Hong Kong, we can now operate a model that is along the same lines as the way auction houses operate in the west.”

Christie’s is relocating in 2024 from its two-floor space in Alexandra House to the new Henderson building designed by Zaha Hadid Architects in Central. “We can double what we have been doing at our current premises at Alexandra House and the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre, increasing our programme from 25 weeks of activities per year to activities all year round,” says Francis Belin, president of Christie’s Asia, adding that the change is “a response to the rapidly growing number of collectors in Asia”.

The expansion of the big three auction houses marks a new phase in Hong Kong’s development as an art and luxury commerce hub, and one that reflects the growth and changes that began before the pandemic and accelerated during it. “The market started maturing more pre-pandemic: it was changing, but that change was expedited during the pandemic, especially in Asia, which came into a second phase of collecting,” says Terase. The first phase of collecting prompted the boom in the Asian art market in the early 2000s, and gained steady momentum into the mid-2000s. It eventually resulted in the boom in the contemporary Chinese and Asian modern art market in the late 2000s and early 2010s, which saw the initial formation of an Asian market and collecting culture. “Initially, in the first phase [of collecting], people were buying on more of a whim, to fill their walls and homes; gradually that has got to a point now where [collectors] are building collections with a vision.” 

Terase’s decision to leave Sotheby’s and start her own consultancy was in large part an attempt to tap into the rise and maturation of the Asian art market and offer next-level services to her clients. Part of this maturation consister of collectors buying different kinds of art: while previously Chinese and Asian modern art had dominated auction sales, now western and contemporary art are becoming more prevalent. Asian collectors in particular have become much more international in their taste.

Terase recalls when she first moved to the city in 2014, “there was no western art in the sales, people were collecting much more regionally and no one outside of Hong Kong or Asia was paying attention to those sales. Fast- forward to when I left [Sotheby’s], and half of the sales revenue came from western art.” She attributes this to the changing collector base: “People are better informed, much younger and more experimental.”

Branczik agrees that there has been an obvious change in Asian collecting habits, and describes it as an expansion of taste: in Sotheby’s spring 2023 auction, Chinese art remained a strongly performing department, raking in HK$1.64 billion, the bulk of which came from the sale of modernist painter Zhang Daqian’s Pink Lotus on Gold Screen for HK$251.6 million (it was also the third highest price ever achieved for the artist at auction). Meanwhile, in the Modern and Contemporary Art section, Joan Miró’s Sans Titre achieved a new auction record, HK$50.6 million, for the artist in Asia, while Picasso’s portrait of his muse Françoise Gilot, Femme dans un Fauteuil, sold for HK$93.1m, and the incredibly popular contemporary artist Yoshitomo Nara’s In the Milky Lane led the Contemporary Art series at HK$100.6m.

“In many ways, it’s the transformation of a local market to a truly global one, in terms of the art that is collected, and indicative of the kind of clients who are based here and their collecting habits,” Branczik notes. “One thing that shouldn’t be overlooked is the role of Asian bidders in our other sale rooms, because they’re not just bidding in Hong Kong.” 

Belin makes a similar observation, reaffirming Asian collectors’ growing international presence. “We continue to see significant Asian buying power in our APAC and global sales room,” the Christie’s chairman says,
citing the US$1.8 billion that Asian clients contributed to its sale rooms globally, or 26 per cent of the total, their highest annual contribution by value since 2015.

As the auction houses physically expand their presence in Hong Kong, they’re also aiming to expand their operations to the rest of Asia. Christie’s has had a representative office in Shanghai since 1994, and
held its first auction there in 2013, and Sotheby’s is opening new offices in Shanghai and Seoul later this year and has hired new staff in Vietnam and Thailand. It will also continue to conduct auctions in Singapore. And Phillips’s spanking new Hong Kong space comes at a time when significant doubts over its financing were raised regarding the company’s ownership. While Crockett dismisses this as speculation, he says that the new space is indicative of “our long-term commitment to this region”, noting that the company has aggressively expanded in Asia in the past eight years, operating in Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, mainland China and Southeast Asia. “We’re not going anywhere.” 

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