All posts tagged: Hong

Hong Kong Signs Agreement to Keep Hosting Art Basel Fair For 5 Years

Hong Kong Signs Agreement to Keep Hosting Art Basel Fair For 5 Years

Published by José Betancourt

Hong Kong may be halfway through Mega 8, the city’s new name for its months-long lineup of major arts, culture, and sporting events, but the undoubted highlight is this week’s Art Basel Hong Kong. The fair has become a must-attend for locals and a major draw for international visitors, with attendance reaching 80,400 in 2024 and 86,500 last year. As such, it is no surprise that the city has signed a new agreement with Art Basel to ensure it remains the region’s sole host for another five years. Rosanna Law, the special administrative region’s culture secretary, announced the deal on Wednesday, which calls for Art Basel to expand the fair in both scale and impact. Related Articles “We will actively complement the Art Basel fair with top-tier cultural performances and Hong Kong’s mega events, so that attending collectors and art appreciators can experience our city’s unique cultural atmosphere and its charms,” she said, according to Radio Television Hong Kong. While Law confirmed that the fair will continue to be held at the Hong Kong Convention …

Art Basel Hong Kong 2026: Best Booths

Art Basel Hong Kong 2026: Best Booths

Published by Jenni Sidey

Sore feet, lean pockets, sustainability woes—what’s a 21st-century art fair really good for, some might wonder? Surpassing the skepticism, this edition of Art Basel Hong Kong offered a compelling glimpse at the talent flourishing across Asia. Sure, Pace Gallery’s Modigliani made the early headlines—but by our reckoning, the fair belonged to Asia’s modern masters and its next generation of stars, some who sorely deserve their spotlight.   Bright spots abounded in the curated sectors, with especially strong showings from Discoveries and Insights, respectively dedicated to emerging artists and thematic presentations. With a simple sheet and smart lighting, Ho Chi Minh’s Vin Gallery staged a shadow-puppet display of ceramic skeletons by Japanese sculptor Ako Goto. Elsewhere, local outfit Lucie Chang Fine Arts made a compelling case for the canonization of the late Chinese painter Zhu Xinjian, whose traditional ink drawings shock with atypically salacious subject matter. gdm, the Hong Kong-based gallery founded by Fred Scholle in 1974, offered one of the best pairings of established and ascendant artists: Kongkee’s seated figure in a lightbox, revealing a second face when viewed from the side, alongside a suite of abstract paintings by Tang Chang, …

Pace Is Selling a .3 M. Modigliani Painting at Art Basel Hong Kong

Pace Is Selling a $13.3 M. Modigliani Painting at Art Basel Hong Kong

Published by José Betancourt

Just weeks after announcing a symposium for Institut Restellini’s decades-in-the-making Amedeo Modigliani catalogue raisonné, Pace is offering a painting by the artist at Art Basel Hong Kong that was only recently authenticated. The work has a long legal backstory. Titled Jeune femme brune (1917–18), the work is the highest priced piece on offer at the Hong Kong fair, according to ARTnews’s Tessa Solomon, who is on the ground reporting from Art Basel. Pace CEO Marc Glimcher told Solomon that the work is being offered for €11.5 million—about $13.3 million—with several parties bidding on the work. (Glimcher also said that the gallery will be bringing a Modligliani work listed in the new catalogue to each fair this year, in celebration of its publication.) Related Articles That’s a far cry from the painting’s status nearly 30 years ago, when it was pulled from a sale at Phillips in 1997 due to authentication concerns. Marc Restellini, art historian and founder of Institut Restellini, told the auction house in the lead-up to the sale that he was not planning …

Hong Kong Action Film Stars Joe Taslim

Hong Kong Action Film Stars Joe Taslim

Published by Daniella Wilson

Calling it now fight fans, we may have an all-time action classic on our hands. Lionsgate released the first official trailer for its upcoming Hong Kong action film The Furious, and the words brutal and intense will be seared on to your brain after watching it. Kenji Tanigaki‘s film is an amalgam of the very best of Asian action cinema and features Chinese actor Xie Miao (aka Mo Tse, who starred with Jet Li in The New Legend of Shaolin and My Father Is a Hero) and Indonesian star Joe Taslim (yes, the guy from The Raid films and also Sub-Zero in the Mortal Kombat movies). The cast also includes Indonesian action favorite Yayan Ruhian (another breakout star from Gareth Evans’ Raid films) and Thai actress Yanin Vismitananda (Europe Raiders, Triple Threat). Though The Furious is only Japan-born Tanigaki’s third outing as a director, the filmmaker is something of a legend in Hong Kong cinema having been the stunt co-ordinator or fight choreographer for films such as Flash Point, Hidden Man, Raging Fire and Twilight …

At 2026 Hong Kong Cultural Summit, Museum Leaders Pitch New Models for Institutions 

At 2026 Hong Kong Cultural Summit, Museum Leaders Pitch New Models for Institutions 

Published by Jenni Sidey

“We are witnessing growing geopolitical complexity around the world. In times like these, culture matters more than ever. Culture transcends borders,” said Hong Kong’s Secretary for Culture, Sports and Tourism, Rosanna Law, at the opening ceremony of this year’s Hong Kong International Cultural Summit on Monday.  The remark offered one of the summit’s few, curated nods to the destabilizing effects of the spiraling U.S.–Israel–Iran war on global transport and energy flows. But the implication landed cleanly: the world is reorganizing—and with it, the distribution of cultural influence. Panels and policy discussions painted a picture of a city weighing its next steps. Over decades, Hong Kong has established its role as a gateway between China and the West; now, it’s engineering a self-sufficient arts and cultural engine that serves first its residents and then its near and dear in the region.   Related Articles The 2026 summit, titled A New Era: Reimagining Community Through the Arts, unfolded across the M+ museum and the Hong Kong Museum of Art. In his remarks, WKCDA Board chairman Bernard Chan said the event arrives “at a moment when the city is firmly reestablishing itself as an international cultural center,” while “ingraining” arts and culture into daily Hong Kong life. To those ends, …

Galleries and Museums to Visit During Art Basel Hong Kong

Galleries and Museums to Visit During Art Basel Hong Kong

Published by Jenni Sidey

In 2025, nearly 100,000 people—collectors, curators, and the merely curious—descended on the archipelago of Hong Kong for Art Basel Hong Kong, the biggest and busiest art event on the global calendar. But woe unto any fairgoer in 2026 who confines their time to the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre: Even if its 240 galleries dazzle and exhaust in equal measure, Art Basel anchors a constellation of exhibitions and events during Hong Kong Art Week. Some venues have partnered with the fair: Pacific Place, a central shopping mall, is exhibiting Christine Sun Kim’s large-scale video cube, A String of Echo Traps (2022-2023). Tai Kwun, a former police station turned premier arts space, has a host of programming planned, with a noted focus on performance.  Below are a handful of standout offerings from independent galleries, museums, and multidisciplinary spaces. Check back with ARTnews throughout the week for on-the-ground coverage of Hong Kong’s 2026 art and culture calendar.  Lee Bul, Rauschenberg, and Ryuichi Sakamoto at M+ Image Credit: Collection of Leeum Museum of Art © Lee Bul. Photo: Jeon Byung-cheol Courtesy of the artist This week, a day at M+ would be well spent. The museum of twentieth- and twenty-first-century visual …

Hong Kong Readies for Art Week With Optimism and a Healthy Caution

Hong Kong Readies for Art Week With Optimism and a Healthy Caution

Published by José Betancourt

Hong Kong’s art market is staging a cautious comeback in 2026, as industry players bet that collectors will return for the city’s marquee art week after years of political upheaval and pandemic-driven isolation. At the macroeconomic level, signs of recovery have emerged since late 2025, spanning high-end residential real estate in the city to equity markets. A recent report by Morgan Stanley suggested that prolonged instability in the Middle East could prompt further capital and talent to migrate to Hong Kong, drawn by its low-tax policies and relative stability. Such a move would provide a boost to the city, after years of economic stagnation and an exodus of expats since 2020. Yet any early optimism faces an immediate test, as the repercussions of the US–Israel–Iran War continue to ripple through the global supply chain. Related Articles Sabrina Amrani Gallery, a perennial exhibitor at Art Basel Hong Kong, told ARTnews it was forced to change its plans for the fair due to the ongoing war. The Madrid-based gallery, which champions artists from the Middle East and …

Hong Kong’s Filmart and Film Festival Turn 30 and 50

Hong Kong’s Filmart and Film Festival Turn 30 and 50

Published by Daniella Wilson

The Hong Kong film industry is looking back even as it charts a course forward — and this week it has good reason to reflect. Filmart, the city’s annual entertainment industry gathering, is staging its 30th edition, while the Hong Kong International Film Festival prepares to mark its 50th in early April. Both milestones deserve acknowledgment, even as the industry they serve navigates genuinely uncertain terrain: falling box office, the rising power of streamers, and the looming challenges posed by artificial intelligence and the boom in vertical short-form drama. Through all of it, Filmart has soldiered on. The event has long positioned itself as a gathering with its finger on the pulse of Asian cinema — not just a marketplace where producers promote their latest projects, but a forum for debating where the industry is headed. This year, 790 exhibitors are on the floor, up from 75 when the event launched in 1997. That growth tracks closely with the rise of the Chinese film market, which Filmart was early to recognize as a transformative force. …

Nippon TV’s ‘Life’s Punchline’ Set for Hong Kong Remake

Nippon TV’s ‘Life’s Punchline’ Set for Hong Kong Remake

Published by Daniella Wilson

Japan’s Nippon TV and Hong Kong producer-studio MakerVille are bringing the bittersweet comedy-drama Life’s Punchline to Hong Kong with a new Cantonese-language remake set for a 2026 broadcast on ViuTV. The deal was announced on day one of Filmart, Asia’s leading film and television content market, running March 17–20 in Hong Kong. The Cantonese adaptation will run 10 episodes at 45 minutes each and marks the first of several international remakes planned for the scripted format, the companies said. Nippon TV’s original series, which aired in Japan in 2021, follows three young men in a struggling comedy trio who decide to disband at age 28 after a decade of chasing stardom. As their friends move into marriage and stable careers, the trio confronts a harsher reality — no savings, no prospects and the creeping sense that time has run out. Their story intersects with that of two sisters working at a diner, one of whom is a devoted fan of the group. Nippon TV said the series drew significant digital engagement, totaling nearly 14 million …

China restricts some overseas-incorporated firms from Hong Kong IPOs

China restricts some overseas-incorporated firms from Hong Kong IPOs

Published by Sam Flores

Beijing is restricting certain Chinese companies incorporated overseas from seeking initial public offerings in Hong Kong, requesting them to change their domicile back to China before going public, according to China’s securities regulator. The China Securities Regulatory Commission (CSRC) said on Tuesday (Mar 17) some red-chip firms, companies that are registered abroad, but hold assets and businesses in China via equity ownership, received the guidance to unwind the structure recently. “Regulators at home and abroad have long scrutinised red-chip vehicles given their opaque shareholding structures and relatively high compliance risks,” the CSRC said in a statement responding to Reuters queries. Sources with knowledge of the matter told Reuters earlier on Tuesday that the CSRC had requested a number of IPO candidates in recent days that they should not list in Hong Kong unless they overhaul their corporate structure. It was not immediately clear how many IPO candidates have received such guidance. The CSRC said it has since December allowed five red-chip companies to complete their filings in order to list offshore. FOCUS ON RED CHIPS …