Harper’s Gallery arrives in Bangkok with a new vision for contemporary art

Do you think your background in rare books gave you a sensitivity to space and sequence that a more conventional art education simply does not teach?

Rare books allowed me to handle and study thousands of the best art and photography books ever published. Over decades I’ve honed an idiosyncratic visual language based on that access. The gallery doesn’t reflect this sensibility deliberately, but I’ve undoubtedly been influenced by the sequencing and cadence of my favourite books. Richard Prince jumps immediately to mind.

How did you think about what a gallery should feel like when the city outside is making quite so much of its own argument?

The design of Harper’s Bangkok at Siam Patumwan House intentionally references our flagship gallery in New York. We wanted to create a throughline connecting the spaces. I love the dynamism and bustle of Bangkok; it’s a large part of why I’m here. But we wanted visitors to have a moment of sanctuary when they enter. The first visible sightline is out to the peaceful courtyard. Having open space surround the gallery is a great benefit.

From your own time on the ground in Thailand, how would you actually describe the collecting culture there, and do you think the international market has been paying it sufficient attention?

The international community neglects Thai and Southeast Asian collectors at its own peril. My cohort of established collector friends in Bangkok is highly sophisticated and well-informed. A more difficult proposition is connecting with people who love art but may lack exposure to the international art world. Part of my role is ambassadorial. We’re hoping to bring the joy of collecting to a wider group.

What can a well-considered gallery space do for a work and for the person standing before it that no fair booth or digital format has yet managed?

There is nothing like seeing art in person. No amount of Instagram scrolling can replace it. Art is exploding all over this city, almost as a grassroots movement, and you can’t be part of that without a physical space.

Thailand has a profound and rather sophisticated tradition of material culture and craft. Do you find that contemporary Western art tends to arrive in that conversation with genuine curiosity, or is that still something the field is quietly working out?

I’ve been upfront that my own knowledge of Thai art leaves much to be desired. I’m convinced there’s a meaningful conversation to be had between the two cultures. As I gain fluency in the history of Thai artistic traditions, I hope to participate more fully in that dialogue.

There is an argument that serious cultural institutions arrive in a market just ahead of significant capital, functioning as a kind of early signal. Do you find that framework useful, or does it rather reduce something more instinctive to a market thesis?

This argument holds. As I mentioned, a great movement is underway in Bangkok, led by institutions like Dib Bangkok and the Bangkok Kunsthalle. Many serious people, including the CEOs of major Western museums, have put Bangkok on their itineraries. It’s also a fantastic destination for luxury travel and for travel on a budget. It’s only a matter of time before capital follows.

For a collector walking into Harper’s Bangkok for the first time, genuinely curious but perhaps still in the nascent stages of collecting, what would you most want them to understand?

Collecting at its best is a creative act, and living with art is one of the most life-enriching experiences there is. I always tell new collectors that once they embark on this journey, they can’t predict where it ends. Art takes us into a mystical, spiritual realm that’s otherwise quite hard to access.

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Critical conversation around gallery design tends to focus on light and proportion, neglecting the question of sequence, the order and pacing of how one encounters things. How consciously do you attend to that, and has Bangkok shifted your thinking on it at all?

I do very little of this consciously. Just ask my team and my family. The best decisions and experiences in life are instinctual and intuitive. If anything, Bangkok made me trust that instinct more, not less. The courtyard view at Siam Patumwan House told us where the space needed to begin, and the rest followed.

The established art capitals carry a pull that can make newer scenes feel as though they are perpetually catching up. What does it actually take for a gallery to feel genuinely rooted in a place rather than merely transplanted? When does a city stop being considered peripheral and begin to be taken seriously on its own terms?

I’d argue Bangkok is on the cusp of being taken very seriously by the art world. Anyone who has visited recently would find that conclusion unavoidable. There’s nowhere on earth that replicates Bangkok’s seamless juxtaposition of luxury and authenticity, of safety and efficiency; and by Western standards, it remains very affordable. Art travellers who haven’t yet been to Bangkok, or haven’t been in years, will be astounded not only by the city’s burgeoning art scene but also by its incredible cuisine, wellness culture and the unfailing hospitality of the Thai people. Rootedness begins when you realise you never want to leave.

For new collectors, what is the one piece of counsel you wish had been offered earlier in your own journey, the thing that tends not to get said, but perhaps really ought to be?

Don’t follow the crowd, and don’t go into this thinking you’re going to make money buying art. You may, of course, but that’s not the point. Being around art is, by definition, a spiritual experience. There’s no other way to put it. Be open to where the journey leads and don’t feel constrained by conventional wisdom. It’s usually wrong. The only journey that matters is your own.

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