Christie’s and Sotheby’s Open Permanent Homes in Hong Kong

Christie’s opened its new Asia Pacific headquarters on 26 September 2024 in The Henderson, the Zaha Hadid Architects tower in Central, and held its first auction there the same evening. Two months earlier, at the end of July, Sotheby’s had opened its Maison a few streets away in Landmark Chater. With Phillips already installed in West Kowloon since March 2023, the three largest auction houses now all have permanent, purpose-built premises in Hong Kong.

The change is larger than it sounds. For decades the big sales in the city took place twice a year in rented halls at the Convention and Exhibition Centre, with viewings compressed into a few days. Permanent salerooms allow the houses to sell, and to exhibit, all year round.

Christie’s occupies about 50,000 square feet over several floors of The Henderson, a curved glass tower completed in 2024 opposite the old Bank of China building. The opening sale was led by a water-lily painting by Claude Monet and by Vincent van Gogh’s Les canots amarrés. Guillaume Cerutti, then chief executive, acknowledged the slower market and argued that a difficult moment is precisely when a statement has to be made. The house has moved its main Asian sale week to September, immediately after Frieze Seoul.

Sotheby’s took a different route. Its Maison, designed by the Dutch practice MVRDV, has 24,000 square feet on two levels. The lower floor, with ceilings six metres high, is an exhibition space of museum standard; the upper is given to Sotheby’s Salon, a shop where works, jewellery, watches and design can be bought at fixed prices, with the selection changing each quarter. It opened with an exhibition of monumental Buddhist sculpture, two works lent by the Long Museum in Shanghai, and the Banksy that shredded itself in a London saleroom in 2018. The company’s offices remain in Pacific Place. Sotheby’s has held auctions in Hong Kong since 1973.

The figures explain the investment. Asian clients accounted for about 30 per cent of Sotheby’s transactions worldwide in 2023 and 28 per cent of Christie’s sales, and the buyers are young: close to a third of Sotheby’s clients in early 2024 were under 40. Among Christie’s bidders in Hong Kong, 85 per cent are based in Asia Pacific, a third of them in the city itself and a third in mainland China.

For visitors, the result is three more places to see art of museum quality, free of charge, between the galleries of Central and Tai Kwun, alongside M+ across the harbour. Our Hong Kong guide has more.