London
Artworks are flooding out of Hong Kong on the eve of the impending hand-over to China. Political uncertainty and fears of export restrictions have encouraged private collectors to ship out huge quantities of art and antiquities. Although it has gone virtually unreported, it is possible that £1 billion worth has been moved out the colony, making it one of the largest exoduses of art in recent history.
One informed source told The Art Newspaper that major collectors have probably shifted more than three-quarters of their works, although this has been done very discreetly. “The movement started five years ago, but it has reached a crescendo in the past six months or so. Owners naturally want to enjoy their art at home until the last moment, but they now realise that it is prudent to move them”, he explained.
The fear is that China will eventually extend its draconian antiquities legislation to Hong Kong. Works over two centuries old are only allowed to be exported with the authority of the State Bureau of Cultural Relics and the penalty for smuggling can be execution. In Hong Kong, on the other hand, there are few restrictions (antiquities over a century old may require an export licence, but this is normally easily obtainable).
Hong Kong has until now been the world’s most important centre for the private collecting of Chinese art and antiquities. Its people have a strong desire to collect, wanting to retain links with the splendours of China’s ancient civilisation. They also have the means (a recent Forbes magazine survey of billionaires listed seventeen in the colony of Hong Kong, compared to just six in the colonial power, the United Kingdom).
China is to resume sovereignty over Hong Kong on 1 July. Under the Sino-British Joint Declaration, the colony will then become a Special Administrative Region of China, retaining its current social and economic system. It will therefore continue to be a free port and a separate customs territory. Under the Joint Declaration, this special status will remain unchanged for fifty years.
In theory, at least, Hong Kong collectors should therefore be free to export their works of art. But understandably there are fears that China might force changes earlier (or that they might be unilaterally introduced by the Hong Kong authorities).
The art has been shifted quietly. The Hong Kong Chinese do not want to be seen as disloyal on the eve of the change-over, and most want to keep their options open. Collectors there tend, in any case, to be discreet.
Huge quantities of ceramics have been moved. This is one of the most popular collecting areas in Hong Kong and prices are buoyant. One source told us that there are perhaps twenty mega-owners of Ming and Qing porcelain who own collections worth over £10 million each. Of these twenty, probably fifteen have moved most of their ceramics out of the colony.
Jade is also being shifted, as well as bronzes and, to a lesser extent, furniture. Most of the works are Chinese, since Western art is still a minority taste in Hong Kong. It has been a profitable time for the specialist art shippers.
Collectors who are shifting their art do not seem to be selling, but putting their pieces in other residences, in store, or on loan to museums. The major destination is the UK, an important centre for the Hong Kong Chinese. Many of the works are being stored in Christie’s warehouse at Nine Elms, in south London (space is rented out, and most of the works will not be auctioned by Christie’s). Other major destinations are the US, Canada, Australia, Singapore and bonded warehouses in Switzerland.
One of the major beneficiaries of this outflow is Singapore’s new Asian Civilisations Museum, which opens on 21 April. The museum’s first wing, in Armenian Street, will be devoted to China, with two thirds of the gallery space used for a permanent display on Chinese culture and the remainder for temporary exhibitions. The opening, just two months before the hand-over of Hong Kong, has put the new museum is a strong position to attract long-term loans.
Lenders to the Singapore museum include Hong Kong shipping magnate Anthony Hardy, who although of British origin, has lived in the colony for nearly forty years. He is lending his archaic bronze collection of 100 pieces (Shang to Western Zhou period) to the new museum for three years. His China Coast paintings are also outside Hong Kong, and are currently on show at Agnew’s in London, in an exhibition organised by Asia House (until 14 February).
Other important loans to Singapore’s new Asian Civilisations Museum from Hong Kong include the Tianminlou collection of Imperial Chinese porcelain, Simon Kwan’s Archaic jade, the Jiurutang collection of early Chinese ceramics and S.Y. Yip’s classic Chinese furniture. In these cases, however, the lenders have not commented on whether there is any connection between the loans and changes in Hong Kong’s status.
American museums are also benefiting from changing political situation. Y.P. Yip, a Hong Kong medical doctor who has amassed a major collection of Chinese furniture, is lending to three museums. Thirty pieces of his Ming furniture went on display at Denver Art Museum last month. More items are to be loaned to the Phoenix Art Museum. Other furniture is being lent to the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery in Washington and will go on show on 21 June.
The Sackler has also attracted two other important loans from Hong Kong. Barrister C.P. Lin and his wife Helen are lending fifteen important pieces of porcelain, mainly Ming and early Qing. Fashion photographer Yon Fan has made a ten-year loan of an important screen-painting, “Crimson lotuses”, by Chang Dai-chien, the greatest Chinese artist of the twentieth century. Sackler curator Jan Stuart stresses that lenders often have mixed motives, “but changes in Hong Kong are a factor”.
So far, the indications are that Hong Kong collectors are moving art, not selling up. But what impact will the exodus have on Hong Kong’s role in the art trade? So far it continues to thrive, with Christie’s reporting record results last November. HK$251 million (£20 million) was sold, the highest sum since the auction house began sales in the colony a decade ago.
Sotheby’s sales were HK$182 million (£14 million), up forty percent on 1995. “There seems to be no dampening of interest in collecting, contrary to what many people think”, commented Alice Lam, Chairman of Sotheby’s Asia.
The general verdict is that Hong Kong will continue to be an important centre for the art trade in the short-term (see The Art Newspaper, No.66, January 1997, pp.31-32), but beyond that it is difficult to predict. At present the Chinese Government seems intent on allowing Hong Kong to preserve its economic system. It has been reported that Beijing’s State Bureau of Cultural Relics is planning a major exhibition in Hong Kong in July, both to mark the change in sovereignty and as a sign that it wants the territory to remain an important centre for the Chinese art world.
But despite these efforts, it will be a herculean task to get Hong Kong collectors to bring back works which have been shipped abroad. As long as the fear of new restrictions hangs over the territory, prudent collectors will want to keep their art and antiquities overseas.
Originally appeared in The Art Newspaper as 'Vast exodus of art from Hong Kong'