For those who watch auctions for sport, guarantees tend to take the fun out of things: There’s nothing less exciting than knowing an artwork has sold before the gavel comes down. But those with skin in the game bask in the security of irrevocable bids. Like them or loathe them—and despite the recent decline in guaranteed lots—they remain widespread at the top end of the market.

In a report last October, ArtTactic found that guaranteed lots were down 22 percent year-on-year for evening sales of postwar and contemporary art in the first half of 2023. However, they accounted for over 54 percent of evening sales of the same segment in the first half of last year (by hammer value).

Given their elite nature, it should be no surprise that auction guarantees are the latest part of the art world that a tech startup is trying to “democratize” and make more transparent. Last week, the White Glove, which advertises itself as “the first online marketplace connecting sellers with guarantors,” launched a pilot project at London’s Forum Auctions, which was acquired by global art advisory Gurr Johns in 2021.

For that project, the UK-based company partnered with Artclear, a blockchain company for recording indelible digital certificates of authenticity for physical artworks, to put a Bridget Riley print, titled Leap (edition of 75), under the hammer. Artclear scanned the work using its portable scanner to create a digital certificate of authenticity stored on the blockchain. The White Glove described the artwork as having “dual backing,” referring to both a guarantee and a blockchain certificate. Estimated at $6,500 to $9,000, the print was then sold during a live-streamed auction last Wednesday, where it went for $9,500.

“Guarantees have long been associated with exclusively seven-figure artworks, yet the market liquidity benefits of the product are equally relevant at lower price points,” Stefan Ludwig, the CEO of Forum, told ARTnews.

For the uninitiated, there are, broadly speaking, two ways in which auction houses can offer guarantees. One is direct: the house itself is on the hook to buy the piece, having negotiated a minimum price with the consignor. The other type is a third-party guarantee, where the house brings in another potential buyer to share the guarantee or take it over entirely. There are collectors and dealers who are known to be frequent third-party guarantors, whether they actually want the artwork or are using the arrangement as a financial vehicle. Recently, even a museum got in on the action. 

Either way, the seller is guaranteed a certain price, whatever the outcome of the auction. Depending on the arrangement, if the lot sells for more, the third-party guarantor might receive a percentage of the final price.

The White Glove says its “financial product” can be adopted by any physical or online auction house and “gives the power back to sellers” by allowing them to negotiate a minimum guaranteed sale price ahead of the auction. “If bids exceed that price, the seller and guarantor share the upside profits, meaning less risk and more benefit for everyone,” the company explains on its website.

The company’s business model has two sources of income. The former works as a commission fee, where the auction house pays the White Glove in return for placing an irrevocable bid. “This is typically a mid-to-high single digit percentage of the final hammer price,” Charles Bent, the company’s cofounder and COO, told ARTnews. That form of income is certain. The other, which is less certain, is “an upside share split between the guaranteed price and the final hammer price. The percentage that the White Glove receives is subject to negotiation.” 

Bent explained that the company’s goal was to demonstrate the potential for innovation in the guarantee space while also making guarantees more transparent and accessible across the board. The company does that, he said, by offering guarantees at a more affordable price point, which expands which assets can be provided guarantees beyond high-end artworks. The company thinks its system can be applied to low-priced artworks, like the Riley print, but also luxury items. The hope, he added, is that the model could be adopted not just by small houses, but also by big ones, like Sotheby’s and Christie’s, and “set a new standard in the art market.” 

Artclear, meanwhile, said it sees its partnership with the White Glove as being about boosting art’s liquidity, making for easier trading in the process. There’s also the hope that it will make it easier to secure asset ownership and provenance information. “We’re enhancing the value of the service that the auction house can provide [because auction houses] can intrinsically trust the data we provide, and it becomes much easier to resell artworks,” Angus Scott, Artclear’s CEO, told ARTnews.

For the White Glove, the way into the top auction houses is to simplify the “lower end of the market” for them. “At this end, it doesn’t make sense for the auction houses to put in the time and effort to find guarantors, so that’s where the maximum value add is for the White Glove,” he added.

Christie’s has experimented with blockchain technology before. Back in 2018, the auction house was the first to record a sale on the blockchain, in this case during the Barney A. Ebsworth Collection auction in New York. The house partnered up with Artory, a blockchain title registry start-up specific to the art market, to create a digitally encrypted certificate for each work in the 90-lot sale, which totaled $323.1 million. Blockchain technology hasn’t been used much in auctions since then, but both Christie’s and Sotheby’s are very gung-ho about guarantees. Why wouldn’t they be, when they ultimately result in fewer unsold lots?

“Used prudently, guarantees are good for consignors, collectors, and the market overall,” Mari-Claudia Jiménez, Sotheby’s head of global business development, told ARTnews. “A potential consignor may feel more inclined to sell if they have the security of a guarantee.” A Christie’s spokesperson similarly told ARTnews that guarantees can “provide a level of assurance” in a tough market and encourage “more sellers to sell their works” at auction. When asked about transparency, Jiménez and the Christie’s spokesperson both mentioned that all guarantees are noted before the sale in online auction catalogs.

And as for the idea that guarantees take the excitement out of the sales? Jiménez pointed to the recent record-breaking sale of Leonora Carrington’s Les Distractions de Dagobert (1945) in May. That work carried both an irrevocable bid and a guarantee and still had a ten-minute bidding war, eventually hitting $28.5 million on a $12 million–$18 million pre-sale estimate.

“It is the market’s recognition of the value of a work of art that establishes its ultimate value, not guarantees,” the Christie’s spokesperson said.

“I am delighted to be joining Bonhams, which has a long heritage, rich history and strong values as an auction house, as well as a reputation as an innovator,” Nouri said in a press statement. “Its focus on digital transformation, global reach and passion, nurtured by its extraordinary talents, makes it an exceptionally exciting and dynamic company. I look forward to building on these strong foundations and focusing on Bonhams’ core DNA.”

Prior to joining Bonhams, Nouri was the CEO of the watch and jewellery company Piaget for seven years, and a private equity partner at the Mirabaud Group, a Swiss private bank. She also worked at Cartier for ten years in several positions, including management of its jewelry, watches, and retail merchandising. She graduated from Fribourg University in Switzerland with a master’s degree in economics.

“Having served as a CEO of a leading luxury company, and in her most recent role as a co-manager of a private equity fund, Chabi has proven abilities as a strong brand-builder, and for digital innovation,” Bonhams Executive Chairman Hans-Kristian Hoejsgaard said in a press statement. “Her background in luxury also brings valuable experience and insight to one of the most important categories at Bonhams.”

Bonhams was founded in 1793 and is owned by the UK-based private equity company Epiris. It has 14 salerooms around the world and acquired four auction houses in 2022: Bukowskis in Stockholm; Bruun Rasmussen in Copenhagen; Skinner in Boston and Cornette de Saint Cyr in Paris.

Nearly half of the exhibitors will be showing at this iteration of Independent for the first time, including London’s Alison Jacques, São Paulo’s Gomide&Co, and New York’s Ippodo Gallery, as well as Fair Warning, the auction platform founded by Loïc Gouzer, a former chairman for postwar and contemporary art at Christie’s.

Among the solo booths that will feature in the fair are Raoul Dufy, an early 20th-century artist associated with the Fauves, presented by Nahmad Contemporary; Almine Rech showing Karel Appel’s work of the 1950s and ’60s; Lenore Tawney’s fiber works from the second half of the 20th century via Alison Jacques; and Diane Rosenstein Gallery’s focus on Sarah Schumann, a queer figurative painter and collagist working in postwar Germany.

Similarly, dealers will also show the work of multiple artists in their booths. Richard Saltoun Gallery will exhibit 12 female Surrealists working, including Eileen Agar, Bĕla Kolářová, Maria Martins, and Juliana Seraphim. Ryan Lee will have a two-person featuring the work of Richmond Barthé and Emma Amos, while Gomide&Co will show the work of Brazil-based Maria Lira Marques and Paraguay-based Julia Isídrez (Guaraní), who is also featured in the 2024 Venice Biennale. Similarly, P420 will show the work of Filippo de Pisis, who is likewise a participant in the current Biennale.

In a statement, Elizabeth Dee, the fair’s founder, said, “Independent 20th Century is broadening our understanding of the canon, by showcasing key artists and movements currently undergoing reassessment in our cultural landscape. We present a platform for well-informed collectors and museums who are actively engaging with opportunities to thoughtfully explore new art historical conversations. Our mission as a fair is to link the past to the present moment in contemporary art.”

The full exhibitor list follows below.

Alexandre Gallery
Mitchell Algus Gallery
James Barron Art
Beck & Eggeling International Fine Art with MACK FOUNDATION
Dutton
Fair Warning
Galatea x Simões de Assis
Gomide&Co
Hallwalls Contemporary Arts Center
Ippodo Gallery
Alison Jacques
Galerie Michael Janssen x Marisa Newman Projects
Jane Lombard Gallery
Luxembourg + Co.
Galeria MaPa
Nahmad Contemporary
OSMOS
P420
Almine Rech
Diane Rosenstein Gallery
RYAN LEE
Salon 94
Richard Saltoun Gallery
Sies + Höke
John Szoke Gallery
Cristin Tierney Gallery x Abattoir Gallery
Van Doren Waxter
Venus Over Manhattan

An intermediary said to be acting on behalf of the American tech company Co2Bit Technologies was reportedly planning to exhibit an unauthenticated Jean-Michel Basquiat painting at the Museum of Modern Art in New York without the institution’s permission.

Co2Bit privately exhibited another painting of dubious provenance as genuine in a major museum. ARTnews reported last month that the company helped to show a painting with disputed attribution to Russian modernist Kazimir Malevich at the Centre Pompidou in January. The Centre Pompidou told ARTnews last month that it had not granted permission to exhibit the artwork.

Thiago Piwowarczyk, the CEO of New York Art Forensics, a Brooklyn-based art authentication laboratory, told ARTnews that an intermediary, who claimed to work for Co2Bit, hired him to authenticate and appraise the Basquiat painting last year.

“[The intermediary] asked me if I wanted to be involved in [exhibiting the painting at MoMA], and I said, ‘Negative. I don’t want to be involved in this,’” Piwowarczyk said. “’I don’t think you should be doing this. You can’t go around talking about something that isn’t [authenticated].’”

MoMA told ARTnews that “for-profit and nonprofit organizations” can rent certain spaces, but that the museum is “unable to accommodate personal events.” When asked if those renting such spaces could hang artwork on the wall, MoMA said, “Unfortunately not. The Museum does not permit any outside artwork in any situation.”

Co2Bit’s stated mission is to use AI and blockchain technology to assess environmental impact. The company purchased the supposed 1915 Malevich painting, titled Suprematism, for a price “in the seven figures” from disgraced Israeli art dealer Itzhak Zarug before hiring several experts to authenticate it. However, one of the experts, Patricia Railing, denied this, claiming she’d never heard of Co2Bit.

A series of now-deleted press releases published by Eminence Rise Media, a New York PR firm, on GlobeNewswire promoted Suprematism, stating that it was due to be “unveiled by museums around the world.” The same PR firm also promoted the supposed Basquiat painting, titled 200 Yen, in three releases posted between December 2023 and February 2024 that have also been deleted. One release said that New York Art Forensics appraised the artwork for $90 million and claimed it was set to “be unveiled in top museums across the United States soon.” Neither of the press releases for Suprematism or 200 Yen mentioned Co2Bit.

Eminence Rise Media declined to comment on if it had been hired by Co2Bit and said that it would only comment on 200 Yen if ARTnews deleted mention of the PR firm in the publication’s reporting on the Malevich-Pompidou story.

“It has come to our attention you [sic] slandering and accusing this company in regards to the Malevich painting, where we had nothing to do with that painting,” the company wrote in an email. “In spite of you confirming Co2Bit as the company responsible for it, your false and phony accusations is [sic] unethical on your end as a journalist. If you have some integrity, you must delete our name from it. Please make it right and we will be willing to communicate further.”

In the first of three phone calls with ARTnews, Piwowarczyk said the intermediary was a French man who claimed to be “an associate of Co2Bit.” He said the man paid in full before Piwowarczyk and his colleague at New York Art Forensics, Jeffrey Taylor, authenticated and appraised 200 Yen. However, during the second call, Piwowarczyk backtracked, saying he had been paid only half the fee, which the intermediary managed to negotiate down from $12,000 to $6,000 because Piwowarczyk said he “felt sorry for him.” In the final call with ARTnews, Piwowarczyk said he had received the full $6,000.  

Despite telling ARTnews several times that he would divulge the name of the intermediary, in the end Piwowarczyk refused to do so. He added that the authentication of 200 Yen was “conditional” and said that the appraisal remained unfinished because the intermediary failed to provide any provenance records.

“Technically, we finished the authentication, but it doesn’t authenticate it positively,” Piwowarczyk said. “There is no provenance—they don’t have a signed appraisal.”

(Piwowarczyk declined to provide ARTnews with any reports or documentation he had given the intermediary.)

Faked Basquiats Proliferate

The title of 200 Yen appears to be a reference to a phrase that appears in the 1983 Basquiat painting Hollywood Africans, which is in the collection of the Whitney Museum in New York. 200 Yen portrays the black outline of a head and two golden crowns against a pale green and brown background. The work also contains the word “SAMO”—a reference to Basquiat’s graffiti tag, which was short for the phrase “same old shit.” Press releases for the painting highlighted these motifs, which recur frequently throughout Basquiat’s oeuvre. One release referred to the “signature” crown imagery portrayed in 200 Yen.

Basquiat’s oeuvre has in recent years become a battleground as the authorship of works in his name receives widespread scrutiny. In 2022, for example, the FBI raided the Orlando Museum of Art after it was accused of exhibiting fake Basquiat paintings. A Los Angeles auctioneer later admitted to the FBI that he and a partner created the paintings. The museum went on to sue its former executive director and other staff members, claiming they were involved in a plan to profit from the eventual sale of the bogus artworks. That former director, Aaron De Groft, has claimed that the Basquiats were real; he countersued the museum last year. A verdict in the cases is not expected until August 2025 at the earliest.

In 2002 artist Alfredo Martinez forged 17 Basquiat paintings and tried to sell them. He was arrested and received a 27-month prison sentence. He later described his attempts to find buyers for these faux Basquiats as a “gag.”

There is no longer a Basquiat authentication committee. In 2012 it was disbanded after 18 years of operation. Several lawsuits over the legitimacy of certain paintings had hit the committee, which was run by the Basquiat estate, and those legal actions ultimately led to its closure. Three months before that, the Andy Warhol Foundation shut down its own authentication committee after spending millions on legal disputes.

Richard Polsky, the founder of Richard Polsky Art Authentication, which specializes in Basquiat paintings, told ARTnews that he is surprised New York Art Forensics tried to appraise 200 Yen. “How can someone appraise something if they don’t even know if it’s genuine or not? I don’t get it, it’s like the cart before the horse,” he said.

Polsky said that his company and the nonprofit International Foundation for Art Research are the only ones in the US qualified to authenticate Basquiats. He added that there are many companies claiming to do art authentication without the expertise, and many pitfalls to be avoided with forgeries.

“If I see a situation [as an authenticator], like money laundering, and know it’s illegal, you gotta say no,” he said. “You gotta think about the bigger picture, and the bigger picture is that your reputation is everything.”

Promotional Materials That ‘Misrepresented the Facts’

Piwowarczyk said Eminence Rise Media deleted the press releases promoting 200 Yen after New York Art Forensics complained about how they “misrepresented the facts.” But a website for the painting remains online. In a cached version of the website from April, it states that Piwowarczyk and his colleague Taylor, “shed light on the profound themes embedded in 200 Yen.” The same sentence was included in an Eminence Rise Media Press release published in December, which also mentioned “an upcoming bid by top museums in the United States to feature [200 Yen] in their prestigious displays.” That sentence has since been removed from the website.

Despite the PR firm promoting Co2Bit’s Malevich painting, Co2Bit chairman Ronald Wilkins told ARTnews he had “no idea” what Eminence Rise Media was. Piwowarczyk told ARTnews that, according to the supposed Co2Bit intermediary, Eminence Rise Media was hired to write the press releases for the company.

One of Eminence Rise Media’s press releases stated that 200 Yen was sold on the LiveAuctioneers website on April 21, 2020. A search on the auction website revealed that the artwork was sold by Bill Hood and Sons Art and Antiques Auctions in Delray Beach, Florida, for $3,300. In its listing, the painting was not attributed to a specific artist, but its description reads “Jean-Michel Basquiat oil stick canvas Abstract Painting,” adding “Mahala Estate Oxford Pa. Said to have been a driver for Andy Warhol.”

Chris Hood, a cofounder of Bill Hood and Sons, told ARTnews that he “forgot” to attribute the painting before it was sold. Hood said a man brought the painting in and “gave a story about the guy he got it from. He somehow hooked up with this guy who said his dad was a courier or driver in New York years back, and that’s how he acquired it.”

Hood added he didn’t think it was a real Basquiat painting but set the estimate at $2,000 to $3,000 and said he would “let the world decide” how much it was worth.

He claimed that a woman he’d never heard of—“some kind of decorator,” Hood said—purchased the painting on behalf of a man named Danny and spent up to $20,000 on several items from the auction house. Hood added that he didn’t have the woman’s name in his records and that she shipped the items to California.

Meanwhile, the identity of the intermediary is still unclear, as is his relationship to Co2Bit. Piwowarczyk said the intermediary’s relationship to Co2Bit only came up when he asked for the company’s name to be included in the final report.

Wilkins, the chairman of Co2Bit, told ARTnews via WhatsApp that he knew nothing about 200 Yen. “With all of Co2Bit’s investors/token-holders, I have no way of knowing who says their intent is to use the proceeds of their art sale to support our philanthropic efforts,” he wrote.

Meanwhile, Piwowarczyk said he had never heard of Wilkins before. “I really don’t want to be associated with this,” he said. “This is something that is going to kill us… go easy on me.”

“We really tried to keep it cheap,” Offermann recently told ARTnews, beginning to laugh. But in the six years since they’ve been in business, the gallery has steadily grown and become a recognizable name on the international art fair circuit. It would be difficult to imagine the contemporary art scene in Georgia without them. 

Prior to launching LC Queisser, whose name is a combination of Offermann’s initials and her mother’s maiden name, the Cologne-born gallerist interned with Gavin Brown and worked in commercial galleries in Berlin and Leipzig, including Galerie Kleindienst and Tanya Leighton. She moved to Tbilisi from her native Germany in 2018 to open the gallery with Lelashvili, drawn to the Tbilisi art scene’s dynamism and potential. Lelashvili was a mountain guide who left that occupation in 2020 to help Offermann as a full partner as the gallery grew.

From the beginning, shows featuring a roster of approximately half Georgian and half non-Georgian artists, many of whom are female, filled the space with floating curtains of images on translucent textile, sound pieces, video work, and installations as well as paintings and works on paper. Lisa Alvarado’s 2019 solo show, for example, included free-floating cloth paintings, feather floor works, and an ambient sound piece. 

And LC Queisser’s network outside Georgia is only beginning to expand, with a number of high-profile collaborations. In February, Offermann curated a group exhibition, titled “Host,” at Galerie Frank Elbaz in Paris, featuring both Tbilisi- and Paris-based Georgian artists. In March, London’s Hollybush Gardens hosted LC Queisser as part of the gallery-share program Condo, and, in April, they staged a show via another gallery-share, Constellation Warsaw, at Stereo. After showing at Frieze New York in May, this fall brings two more blue-chip fair appearances: Frieze Seoul in September and Art Basel Paris in October. 

But, on the preview day of the fourth edition of the Tbilisi Art Fair in April, Offermann was focused on the presence of the Georgian president, Salome Zourabichvili, whose security retinue waited outside. At the gallery, Berlin-based Georgian artist Ketuta Alexi-Meskhishvili was opening her solo show, “making food out of sunlight.” In both luminous dye-sublimation prints on aluminum and analog photographs, Alexi-Meskhishvili presented various studies of tulips, a reference to the peaceful student pro-independence protest in 1989 that has since become a national symbol. A four-minute film, Interior, pierced the veil of intimacy surrounding several “house museums,” private collections kept away from Soviet-era censorship.

“There’s a reason the president’s here,” said Won Cha, one of the gallery’s artists, underscoring the import of such an appearance at a commercial gallery by the country’s leader. 

Through LC Queisser, Offermann has brought Georgian artists to the international spotlight and international artists to Georgia. “If we wanted to do it here, we needed to have an exchange with international artists, with the international scene, otherwise it wouldn’t work,” she said.

When LC Queisser opened, they had to figure out how to navigate, framing, crate building, packing, and shipping in a context with little infrastructure. “At the beginning, we received a bit of this ‘Why?’” Offermann said. “It’s not easy because you have to explain to everybody, including the artists, why it’s interesting to show in Tbilisi. So it was also a test for us. But [then] I think people started to see it.” 

Almost as soon as the gallery was up and running, Offermann founded an artist residency program (in partnership with the Tbilisi-based organization Propaganda Network, which aims to make contemporary art accessible) that focuses on bringing artists into the local community, through reading groups, university teaching, or other gatherings. “From my experience working in Leipzig, another peripheral location, I understood how important a vivid exchange is to create visibility for the scene here,” Offermann said. 

Then, during the pandemic, having noted the lack of art-centered bookshops in Georgia, she joined forces with curator Nina Akhvlediani and graphic designer Dan Solbach to open a publishing arm, Kona Books. Beginning with Alexi-Meskhishvili’s Boiled Language in 2020, Kona Books has produced 10 art books and runs the physical bookstore, Posta da Kona, downstairs from LC Queisser, in collaboration with another local publisher, Post Press.

Through one of her artists, Sitara Abuzar Ghaznawi, Offermann met one of the gallery’s most acclaimed artists, Ser Serpas, who is currently featured in the 2024 Whitney Biennial and was the subject of a major solo show at the Bourse de Commerce in Paris last fall. In 2019, Ghaznawi invited Serpas to collaborate on a show at LC Queisser, “Stars Are Blind,” which juxtaposed Ghaznawi’s delicate, wall-mounted boxes with Serpas’s installations using scavenged car parts and hardware. That exchange ultimately led Serpas to participate in the gallery’s residency. “These crossings I really like,” said Offermann. Serpas has since filled the gallery with her well-known bricolage of potent detritus, as well as with more intimately-scaled, ephemeral works.

Offermann has, meanwhile, helped raise the profiles of artists both young and old, including Tolia Astakhishvili, who won the 2024 Chanel Next Prize which comes with €100,000, and Elene Chantladze, the nearly octogenarian self-taught painter to whom she gave a solo booth at Art Basel Paris last year. Offermann first showed Chantladze’s art as part of a virtual exhibition called “13 to Support” (2020), benefiting Georgian artists who were not receiving governmental support. Later that year, Chantladze mounted her first solo show with the gallery, featuring her loose, oneiric, expressive small-scale paintings of figures and landscapes, mostly in gouache and pen on cardboard. 

Astakhishvili is a more recent addition to the program, having first featured in a group show, “In Heat Wind Wounds Holes” (2022). Her architectural installations, unruly intrusions of sheetrock and plaster-board that alter the gallery’s floor plan, blur the boundaries between one reality and the next. It was, Offermann said, “the most demanding, challenging, but rewarding show we ever hosted.”  

A few days after the Tbilisi Art Fair, Offermann and Lelashvili made a drive into the Georgian countryside to the city of Telavi to visit the former home and studio of the late painter Vati Davitashvili, whose work they first showed in 2023. Davitashvili, who was under house arrest during the Soviet occupation, depicted the Caucasus mountains he glimpsed at the end of his street time and again, during different seasons and weathers. With the artist’s grandson, Offerman has worked to catalogue Davitashvili’s paintings, many of which were dispersed among neighbors and friends. In this way, she is also trying to resurrect a key, if underknown, part of Georgian art history as she has been doing with the gallery’s living artists. 

“We try to save what’s there,” she said.

In the first week of July, when all eyes were on Japan for the second edition of the Tokyo Gendai fair, new developments elsewhere in Asia may have gone unnoticed. As it happens, things are heating up in Singapore. The country’s biggest art fair ART SG (which shares its organizers with Tokyo Gendai) recently announced new cultural partners; there are more and more pop-up exhibitions by regional curators and gallerists; a major young collector has opened a new retail space that will spotlight creativity; and a gallery from Australia recently opened a new space there again.

And a couple weeks ago, Singapore got its latest shot in the arm when influential Asian gallery Tang Contemporary Art launched its new outpost there.

Adding to Tang’s seven outposts across Hong Kong, Beijing, and Seoul, the new Singapore gallery measures 7,500 square feet and is located on the sixth floor of the Delfi Orchard building, in an older area of the city’s shopping district, near a wealthy residential area with elite schools and embassies.

Tang opened in Bangkok in 1997. Since then, founder Zheng Lin told ARTnews, the gallery “has gone through several stages: from 1997 to 2006 was the stabilization phase; after entering Beijing in 2006 was the expansion phase; and from 2015 onward was the international expansion phase” when the gallery launched in other parts of East Asia. In January, Tang even expanded its original space in Bangkok, timing the additional new space for young artists to the launch of the new Kunsthalle Bangkok.

The Singapore space, Lin said, has been in the planning for three years, but “due to the pandemic and policy uncertainties” it took him a full two years to find a good location. (Back in February, Lin teased the Singapore location in an interview with Artnet News’s Cathy Fan, saying “it pav[es] the way for our eventual expansion into European and American markets.”)

The opening exhibition features a selection of works from prominent Asian artists including Ai Weiwei, Yue Minjun, Wu Kukwon, and Gongkan, among others. The works were displayed in the manner of a conventional white space gallery targeting sales-friendly collectors. The opening on June 28 saw a steady stream of visitors including Chinese collectors and influencers, as well as Singapore media and collectors.

Lin envisions Singapore as Tang’s strategic hub in Asia: “From 1997 to 2006, we developed in Southeast Asia and established cooperation with some Southeast Asian artists and collectors. However, the art markets in countries surrounding Bangkok were immature, whereas Singapore is an international metropolis, ideal for art transactions with abundant resources and significant influence.”

While Singapore’s gallery scene has witnessed its fair share of peaks and troughs, Tang is launching its new space during an interesting time for the city’s art scene. On June 2, Australian gallery Sullivan+Strumpf opened a new studio space in Singapore’s Kallang district. This move comes four years after the gallery left its previous physical premises in the city.

“For us, this is a significant location that acts as a bridge between Australia, Asia, and the rest of the world, and we see our studio as a vehicle to introduce the growing Australian market to Asian artists and vice versa,” the gallery’s Singapore-based director Megan Arlin said.

There is also the latest creative cluster, New Bahru, at the premises of a former local high school, launched by Wee Teng Wen, son of Singaporean billionaire Wee Ee Cheong, as well as a fourth-generation member of the family behind United Overseas Bank, and former board member of the Singapore Art Museum.

Known locally as the founder of popular hospitality and lifestyle brand The Lo & Behold Group, Wee told ARTnews, “Our vision for New Bahru is to be the best representation of Singapore that ultimately puts our city on the global cultural map.”

Meanwhile, Singapore’s biggest art fair ART SG recently announced new cultural partners including the Delfina Foundation in London and added new members to its advisory board, including Hong Kong collector Alan Lau. Even pop-up exhibitions by regional curators and gallerists in the city have witnessed an uptick during the typically off-peak summer season.

The renewed surge in activity could very well be disparate efforts to make up for an increasingly restricted local and global art market.

Veteran Singapore-based dealer Kevin Cuturi pointed out that 2023 saw the beginning of a correction in the art market, which has been confirmed in 2024. “[The] post-pandemic years saw an incredible extravaganza, in terms of buying art. We were selling as much online (through platforms such as Instagram) as we were selling in the physical gallery. Online sales [for us] have come down a lot since second half of 2023 and collectors are being more selective now with their purchases.”

In Cuturi’s view, the art market has gone back to what it was like before the pandemic, “when galleries were more reliant on their regular collectors and only met new collectors through their physical gallery and programming.”

“When I speak to my gallery colleagues around the world, the sentiment is very similar, so I do not think this is a Singapore situation. It’s more a global one,” he added.

Still, Singapore is making some progress in the necessarily slow process of developing a mature art market. “Culture appreciation, which in my opinion is the foundation of any art market, does not happen overnight,” Cuturi said. “It’s an educational process that takes time, energy and passion, and the more cultural players we have in Singapore, the better.”

When the Long Museum, the private institution founded by Chinese mega-collectors Liu Yiqian and Wang Wei, began selling work last year, it felt like a sign of the times. It meant that Asian collectors were not only being less active in terms of buying. They were actively selling, too.

Previously, the paintings being sold by collectors like Liu and Wang—a $34.9 million Modigliani that appeared at Sotheby’s last year, for example—came from the West and made their way to China via flashy purchases. Today, it is the opposite: these very same paintings are being sent back to the West, where they will likely find new buyers.

Now, there is news of at least two major paintings on the market that appear to come from China: a Warhol that, according to a source close to the gallery, is priced in excess of $100 million and a Basquiat that sold in 2013 for $29 million.

In mid-May—not coincidentally, during the major auctions in New York—Gagosian opened “Icons From a Half Century of Art,” an exhibition of paintings and sculptures by Basquiat, David Hockney, Jasper Johns, Donald Judd, Gerhard Richter, Mark Rothko, Richard Serra, Frank Stella, Cy Twombly, and Warhol. It is open only to collectors, and can only be seen by appointment at Gagosian’s 24th Street gallery in New York. The image the gallery used to promote the exhibition on its website is of a Warhol “Mao.” Warhol famously created no fewer than 199 images of “Mao,” but this isn’t just any “Mao.” It is the only one of the four so-called “giant Maos”—they stand a full 15 feet high—that is not in a museum.

The last time the Gagosian “Mao” was publicly on the market was in 2008, when Christie’s, in collaboration with London dealer James Mayor, sent the painting to Hong Kong with a price tag of $120 million. As described in write-up at the time in the Wall Street Journal, that price would have set a record for the artist: the auction record for a Warhol then was the $71.7 million Christie’s got in May 2007 for the 1963 silkscreen Green Car Crash. (The record today is the $195 million that Larry Gagosian paid for a painting of Marilyn Monroe at Christie’s in 2022.) But the “Mao” didn’t sell in 2008 in Hong Kong, and then came the recession. According to a source with close knowledge of the painting, it did, however, sell around 2013 for a price within the range of $120 million.

The person involved in that transaction, dealers say, was Rosaline Wong, who has in the past reportedly worked on behalf of Henry Cheng, chairman of Hong Kong–based New World Development. According to Forbes, Cheng, who succeeded his own father at New World, is China’s third-richest person. New World’s shares dropped 60 percent between January 2023 and January 2024, and the Cheng family’s net worth dropped by nearly a fourth, to $22.1 billion.

Wong is a former Hong Kong barrister that Artnet News and the South China Morning Post previously linked to the purchase of a $150 million Gustav Klimt painting. The painting was previously owned by Oprah Winfrey, and the transaction was brokered by Gagosian, according to Bloomberg. More recently, Artnet News linked Wong with a Klimt that sold at Sotheby’s last year for $108.4 million. Dealers who worked with Wong between 2013 and 2015 say she appeared to be buying on behalf of a foundation that was in formation.

According to South China Morning Post, around 2015, Wong founded an investment advisory company, HomeArt, which matches individuals and companies with art for sale. The SCMP reported in 2022 that at that time Wong was “in the middle of setting up a US$1 billion ‘museum-grade’ art investment fund with Hong Kong- and Singapore-based asset management firm Zheng He Capital, which counts among its heavyweight advisers Gagosian and Wong’s close friend, the Hong Kong billionaire Henry Cheng Kar-shun,” head of New World Development and father of collector Adrian Cheng, executive vice chairman and CEO of New World Development and founder of the K11 , a venture that blends art, commerce, and development, and that has an associated foundation, the K11 Art Foundation. Artnet News reported last year that Wong was “launching a fractional ownership fund specializing in museum-quality works for a broader pool of investors.”

Wong has also been linked to Joseph Lau, whose purchase of a smaller Warhol “Mao” painting in 2006 for $17 million set the stage for Christie’s bringing the “giant Mao” to Hong Kong.

Since 2021, Homeart has since done several exhibitions in collaboration with Christie’s, among them an 11-work Basquiat show in Hong Kong. That exhibition, held in May 2021, included an untitled 1982 painting that was purchased at Christie’s London in 2013 for $29 million. (It’s worth noting that Christie’s made a point of telling the New York Times just after that sale that there was a large amount of bidding from Asia.) That Basquiat painting is also in the current Gagosian “Icons” exhibition, according to several sources who have seen the show.

A representative for Gagosian declined to comment on the identity of the consignor of the Warhol and Basquiat paintings. Wong did not return a request for comment submitted to Homeart.

The four “giant Mao” paintings are so big that Warhol had to make them in the Factory’s screening room rather than the painting studio. They were so expensive to produce that he needed backing from two galleries (Knoedler & Co. and Castelli) and an avid collector of his (Peter Brant). In return, each of those parties got a “giant Mao” painting. The one Christie’s sent to Hong Kong in 2008 went through Castelli to James Mayor, who placed it in a private collection in Europe. Another was sold by Knoedler in 1974 to the Art Institute of Chicago. The third, Brant gifted in 1977 to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. The fourth “Mao” Warhol kept, and eventually sold it to Charles Saatchi , who eventually sold the piece to the late German collector Erich Marx, who, in 2007, put it on long-term loan to the Hamburger Bahnhof museum in Berlin.

Coincidentally, the Hamburger Bahnhof “Mao” was in the news this week. The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung ran an op-ed by art historian Von Hubertus Butin, who speculated that the painting might soon hit the market. Marx died in 2020; three paintings from the Marx collection—two Warhols and a Twombly —that previously appeared at the Hamburger Bahnhof have been removed from the museum by his heirs. Butin writes that those paintings, which he claims are collectively worth some $170 million, have been consigned to Gagosian and that some may have sold. (Gagosian declined to comment on this; the museum said only that the paintings have been removed.) The Marx collection’s “Mao” could be next to go, Butin claimed, writing that there had at one point been a $155 million offer made for that “Mao.” The museum said it had no knowledge of this, and dealers told ARTnews that the figure seemed unrealistic. One dealer even called the sum “aspirational,” particularly in the current art market conditions.

As for whether the “Mao” at Gagosian has found a buyer, the gallery isn’t saying. The “Icons” show is up through July 19.

McMillan has a range of experience in the art market. Most recently, she founded her itinerant gallery and consultancy company, Saint George Projects, which has staged exhibitions for artists like Alvaro Barrington and Henri Paul Broyard in New York, Los Angeles, Johannesburg, Berlin, and elsewhere.

Prior to that, she was a director at David Zwirner for a year, and worked at Gavin Brown’s Enterprise for four years, where she was also a director. She has also worked at Alexander Gray Associates and the Studio Museum in Harlem.

“I am honored to join The Armory Show at this important moment in the fair’s history,” said McMillan said in statement. “My goal is to empower collectors and emphasize the fair’s role as a platform for artists, galleries and art enthusiasts. The Armory Show has long been celebrated as a foundational fair for New York and the US art market. I look forward to building on The Armory Show’s achievements, while also championing new voices and creating opportunities for diverse perspectives in contemporary art.”

McMillan’s appointment is the first major leadership change at the fair since it was acquired by Frieze in 2023. The fair’s next edition is scheduled to run in early September. Marking its 30th anniversary this year, the upcoming edition announced its exhibitor list last month. Frieze’s director of fairs, Kristell Chadé, and its Americas director, Christine Messineo, were in charge during the application process.

In a statement, Chadé said, “We are thrilled to welcome Kyla McMillan as Director of The Armory Show. Her wide-ranging experience and creative drive will undoubtedly take the fair to new heights, fostering an inclusive and dynamic environment. Her past projects have demonstrated a talent for reaching new audiences and forging meaningful connections with art.”

The 2024 edition of the fair will be the first to be led by Bridget Finn, a former gallerist who was hired to serve as the fair’s director last year. This year’s figure is slightly above the 277 galleries that took part in the marquee US fair last year; the 2022 edition also hosted 283 exhibitors.

The fair will also include 32 first-time exhibitors, the biggest grouping of newcomers to a Miami Beach fair since 2008. Among those are Gallery Wendi Norris, ILY2, Fabian Lang, Dastan Gallery, Gallery Baton, Pearl Lam Galleries, Catinca Tabacaru, Gallery Nosco, Gajah Gallery, and Sweetwater. While participating galleries come from 34 countries and territories, the fair said that around two-thirds are from the Americas.  

Among the blue-chip exhibitors are Gagosian, Hauser & Wirth, Pace, David Zwirner, Blum, Sadie Coles HQ, Paula Cooper Gallery, Jeffrey Deitch, Gladstone Gallery, David Kordansky Gallery, Lehmann Maupin, Galerie Lelong & Co., Victoria Miro, Mnuchin Gallery, Thaddaeus Ropac, and Jack Shainman.

Additionally, 25 galleries will show in the fair’s main Galleries section for the first time. Of those, 21 of them are doing so after previously participating in a different section; they include Instituto de Visión, Edel Assanti, Daniel Faria Gallery, Central Fine, and Afriart Gallery and Rele Gallery, who will share a booth. Several of these galleries benefit from the introduction of a minimum-size booth option.

In a statement, Finn said, “It was incredibly important that we carve out a more equitable path to participation for small and mid-sized galleries entering the main sector of this show, and the proof is in the extraordinary number of newcomers joining this edition. We remain super agile and attuned to the changing and individual needs of our galleries and their artists, and committed to creating an absolutely cannot-miss experience for them and for collectors, museums and foundations, major cultural partners, and visitors from Miami Beach and around the world.”

In addition to the main Galleries section, the fair will also include five additional sections: Nova, for work made in the past three years; Positions, for solo showcases of emerging artists; Survey, for presentations of work made before 2000; Kabinett, for presentations within a main booth; and Meridians, for large-scale works, which this year is curated Yasmil Raymond, the outgoing director of Portikus. Details on the latter two sections will be announced at a later date. This year’s edition will also see the return of the fair’s Conversations program, which will be organized by writer Kimberly Bradley.

Galleries in the Nova section include Charles Moffett, Kendra Jayne Patrick, Pequod Co., Silverlens, Soft Opening, Gallery Vacany, and Welancora. Positions includes Sebastian Gladstone, Gordon Robichaux, Gypsum Gallery, Peana, Proyectos Ultravioleta, and Verve. And Survey will feature Luis De Jesus, Charlie James Gallery, Lyles & King, PKM Gallery, and Ryan Lee.

“We have an exceptional roster of galleries participating in our Miami Beach show this year, coming from all corners of the Americas, Europe, and Asia,” Finn said. “The proposals in Nova, Positions, and Survey are of exceptional quality and ambition, and it’s clear that galleries in the main sector will not be holding back come December, bringing their best of the best to this all-important fair in the world’s leading art market.”

Galleries

Nova

*Espacio Valverde and Fabian Lang will share a booth.

Positions

Survey

While the VIP preview Thursday of Tokyo Gendai’s second edition brought healthy buzz—along with major collectors like Takeo Obayashi, Shunji and Asako Oketa, Yoshiko Mori, Jenny Wang and Simian Wang—the atmosphere on Friday was more subdued. ARTnews took the opportunity to ask galleries how their sales had been so far.

Two brand-name galleries with Tokyo branches saw robust sales. By the middle of day two, mega-gallery Pace Gallery, a newcomer to the fair that did a soft opening for its new Tokyo space this week, either sold or had on strong reserve all eight works they were showing by Robert Longo, at prices ranging from $90,000 to $750,000. (All the works were going to local collections.) Meanwhile, Los Angeles’s BLUM, which has spaces in New York and Tokyo, sold a Ha Chong-Hyun painting for $250,000, a work on paper by Yoshitomo Nara for $180,000, a Kenjiro Okazaki painting for $160,000, and ceramics by Kazunori Hamana and Yuji Ueda for $20,000 each, among other pieces.

Tokyo’s ShugoArts sold two Lee Kit works, priced in the range of $30,000. Another Tokyo gallery, Anomaly, had sold out almost all of their works by Yusuke Asai, though the gallery declined to give prices.

BLUM founder Tim Blum told ARTNews that the fair seemed more or less the same as last year, but Taku Sato, director of Tokyo gallery Parcel, another returnee to the fair, had a less positive impression. “Compared to last year, as my expectations were not that high, I think so far [the second edition] is good,” Sato said. “However, I do feel there were more people from abroad last year than this year, and more institutional curators last year.” Parcel is showing large works by Tomonari Hashimoto. So far, numerous smaller pieces by Hashimoto have sold, ranging from $3,000 to $5,000, some going into notable private collections in Japan.

There tend not to be million-dollar plus artworks at Tokyo Gendai. The $750,000 Longo at Pace’s booth appeared to represent the upper end of things. Most top works were selling in the up-to-$300,000 range, as is the case for all of Art Assembly’s fairs, co-founder Magnus Renfrew told ARTnews on Friday. (For what it’s worth, he pointed out, although fairs like Art Basel Hong Kong may have works that go higher in price, most works that sell tend to be in a similar same range.)

Renfrew cautioned against taking any sales results thus far as the final word: there is a strong work ethic in Japan, and for that reason many collectors tend to come to the fair, and buy, on the weekend.

“There’s a lot of collectors that won’t come during the week who will come on Saturday and Sunday. And we know someone personally who are doing that,” he said. According to conversations Renfrew said he was having with participating galleries, “most of them have been having good conversations and many have sold artworks,” though results among them were uneven, with some still awaiting sales.

One noted collector missing from the festivities was young mega-collector Yusaku Maezawa, who, according to dealers, usually likes to confirm his purchases in person. The director of his foundation was, however, one of the first to arrive when the fair opened its VIP preview on Thursday.

While some have hoped that a weak yen right now might encourage foreign collectors to travel, as ARTnews Karen K. Ho reported earlier this week, there was not a large contingent of collectors from the United States or Europe. However, that’s not really this fair’s brief. Renfrew is more focused on attracting collectors from the region. He did, however, say, “In an ideal world, we would want to be able to attract a wider audience from around the world, and I think that there could be the potential to do that.”

The July date for the fair, he admitted, when weather in Tokyo is extremely hot and humid, is a hindrance and spring and autumn tend to be more attractive for US and European visitors. (For what it’s worth, the weather right now isn’t the only obstacle. There are events in more attractive climes. Paris’s Almine Rech may be manning a booth in Tokyo, but the gallery opened a branch in Monaco’s Carré d’Or district, and is participating in the sixth edition of Monaco Art Week, which runs July 2 to July 7, precisely the same dates as Tokyo Gendai.)

“The priority for us is to ensure that we’re delivering a really strong Japanese audience of existing collectors in the art community and curators and museum directors, then to be broaden the audience within Japan through this kind of focal point,” Renfrew said. “And then regional attendance, from the core constituencies within the natural catchment area, which is mainland China, Korea, Taiwan, and Hong Kong.  Then we build up from there.”

When I brought up the recent changes in the art market in the West, where speculators are fleeing as prices for young hot artists correct, Renfew said, “We’re really keen to try and build the market for the long term. We’re not interested in a flash in the pan.” He then pointed to the wild speculation in Chinese art in 2006-2008.

“There was an absence of a curatorial critical framework to provide validation [for artworks with] high prices and were on the cover of auction catalogues. After the correction in the Chinese contemporary art market, people became much more aware of that [vacuum].”

Then came Art HK, of which Renfrew was the first director, from 2007 to 2012, which then became Art Basel Hong Kong, and with it a growth in serious institutions like Hong Kong’s M+. “The first phase was that the fair in Hong Kong was the focal point, with a wide catchment area that required all of the different constituencies [across Asia] to come in, and to have a market that was big enough to sustain the scale and ambition that we set up there.”

Now, Renfrew said, “we’re in a new phase of the market in Asia, [where] each of those constituencies has grown, and warrants a fair of its own.”

One question on dealers’ minds as Renfew’s new group of fairs—Tokyo Gendai, Art SG in Singapore, and Taipei Dangdai in Taiwan—matures is how he is connecting them, for instance, by encouraging cross-visitorship. He said that while it is crucial that the fairs maintain their own identity, “One of the interesting things for us is how we will be able to cross promote and cross pollinate, particularly within our VIP network, I think that the fact that we’d have three fairs a year where we’re gaining data for each means that we’re rapidly expanding our VIP database throughout Asia.”

“Deep roots [in each individual location] and broad branches [across the region], means that we’re in a unique position,” he added.

Having three fairs each year, Renfrew said, enables him to iterate quickly. “We’re able to experiment a little bit with different initiatives and see what works and what doesn’t work. We can kind of we can fail rapidly on things, so there’s some quite good learnings.”

I told Renfrew that one dealer had quipped to me that, while Renfrew was fond of pointing to the sheer amount of wealth in a place like Singapore—i.e. note the number of family investment offices there—that didn’t mean that that the wealthy there are in the habit of buying art. “That’s a valid point,” Renfrew said. “Just because there’s money that does not necessarily translate into sales.” His riposte, however, is that you nevertheless need to go where the money is. “No money equals no sales.”

Fair enough.