Booming Asian art market shows signs of stalling
Hong Kong has become a major center for the auction of Asian art and antiques. This view of Hong Kong’s Avenue of the Stars features the statue that pays homage to martial arts expert and film star the late Bruce Lee. Photo by Johnson Lau, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.5 Generic license.
HONG KONG (AP) – An uneven set of results from Sotheby’s autumn Hong Kong sales indicates that the surging Asian art market appears to be pausing for breath amid rocky global financial markets.
A Meiping vase sold on Wednesday for Hong Kong $168.7 million ($10.3 million), a world record for Ming dynasty porcelain. But other results from the auction of a closely watched collection of imperial Chinese porcelain were mixed. Another highlight, a Qianlong vase decorated with peaches, sold near the low end of the presale estimate.
Sotheby’s wrapped up a week of auctions for wine, art, jewelry and other collectibles on Thursday.
The sales are seen as a barometer of the Asian art and collectibles market, which has come to be dominated by newly wealthy mainland Chinese.
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