With an influx of sparkling new museums, galleries, and exhibition spaces, Hong Kong’s claim as one of the art world’s most important capitals is only growing stronger.
As a global financial center and a gateway to China (which overtook the UK in 2023 as the second biggest art market in the world, behind the US), Hong Kong has, of course, long been an art hub. But it had been largely closed off to the world for three years during the COVID-19 pandemic, and blossoming in the isolation was a broader refocusing on local talent and the cultivation of a local art infrastructure. Not to mention a gallery boom, driven by a new generation of collectors keen on homegrown talent: The Hong Kong Art Gallery Association reported a 27% increase in member galleries between 2021 and 2023.
The world’s largest auction houses are scaling up aggressively to meet demand, with record-breaking sales in 2021 and 2022. Mega gallery Hauser Wirth opened in January a new space at street level (read: prime real estate—and rare for commercial art galleries in Hong Kong). And Art Basel Hong Kong, first held in 2013, returned this year to its pre-pandemic peak at full capacity, and the fair company recently announced a unique partnership with the Hong Kong Tourism Board to present Hong Kong–themed experiences and activations at each of Art Basel’s four shows worldwide.
Even considering the city’s precarious political situation—with reports that some artists have decamped amid worries about censorship and a new national security law passed in March further broadening the sweeping 2020 legislation that has largely quelled political dissent—all signs point to a flourishing art scene.
Here are a few highlights from the Hong Kong art scene, from major museums to artist studios and more.
M+
Opened in 2021 in the depths of the COVID pandemic, M+ is Hong Kong’s first museum dedicated to 20th- and 21st-century art, design, architecture, and moving images. It’s now one of Asia’s most popular art museums and home to one of the world’s largest and most comprehensive collections of contemporary Chinese art, among other highlights. (Don’t miss Kuramata Shiro’s Kiyotomo sushi bar, a 1980s interior-design gem transplanted wholesale from Tokyo’s Shinbashi district to the galleries.)
Designed by Herzog de Meuron on reclaimed harborfront land that now comprises the burgeoning culture hub now known as West Kowloon Cultural District (designed by another starchitect firm, Foster and Partners), the concrete colossus manages to feel airy and light-filled inside. It faces a showstopping panoramic view of the Victoria Harbor skyline—and has become an integral part of it itself: At night the façade on its upper floors doubles as a 20-story rectangular LED screen, one of the biggest media walls in the world, that displays works from the collection and special commissions.
Jockey Club Creative Arts Centre
Built in 1977 after a great fire ripped through the Shek Kip Mei neighborhood (home to Hong Kong’s first public housing projects), this building was once inhabited by family-run cottage industries like metalworkers, movable-type printers, and dental-equipment manufacturers. Following the decline of local manufacturing as factories moved to mainland China, it reopened in 2008 as the Jockey Club Creative Arts Centre and today houses some 140 artists studios and arts organizations.
It’s retained the classic Hong Kong factory architecture, with nine floors facing a sunlight-flooded courtyard, and a wander around will take you past almost everything across traditional, folk, and contemporary arts and crafts: glass- and woodwork, 3D modeling, puppets and shadow art, indigo dyeing, and even musical-instrument making and fashion design, in addition to workshops, performances, and exhibitions. Don’t miss the studios of ink artist Yau Wing Fung; Chinese gongbi (fine-brush) painter Cherie Cheuk Ka-wai; installation artist Angela Yuen; painter Po Ying Agnes Leung; and mineral-pigment painter Man Chun Kwong.
Scattered around the hallways and other public spaces are artistic reinterpretations of the previous inhabitants, incorporating shoe molds, printing presses, and mahjong tile-polishing machines. Although it retains the name of the city’s gambling authority (whose charitable wing funded the project), it’s now a completely separate, self-financed entity and a subsidiary of the Hong Kong Baptist University.
Centre for Heritage, Arts and Textile
The Centre for Heritage, Arts and Textile is located in The Mills, three recently renovated cotton-spinning factory buildings in Tsuen Wan that now house local specialty boutiques. Opened in 2019, this textile heritage museum offers a glimpse of the rise and eventual decline of Hong Kong’s textile industry, which played a pivotal role in developing its society and economy through the second half of the 20th century. It spans the industry’s rise in the 1940s and 1950s, thanks to modern machinery and an industrious workforce, to the denim craze reinvigorating the business in the ’70s and the golden era in the 1980s driven by surging demand for soft goods. There are engaging, interactive historical exhibits, textile-arts and fashion exhibitions, and hands-on activities and demonstrations (a friendly volunteer, for example, showed me how to spin raw cotton into yarn by hand).
Fo Tan Artists Studios
Drawn by cheaper rents and large empty spaces (both exceedingly rare in Hong Kong) that were left vacant as industries relocated to mainland China, artists began to set up workspaces in the industrial Fo Tan suburb in the early 2000s. (Among them were Leung Chi-wo and Sara Wong, the first artists to represent Hong Kong at the 2001 Venice Biennale.) It was one of the very first clusters of artists’ studios in Hong Kong. Today, scattered throughout the district, some 200 artists across all mediums work in about 80 studios, often still side by side with manufacturers. Trevor Yeung, who had a collateral exhibition in Venice this year, has worked from a studio there since 2015.
COVID hit the artists’ community here hard, as strict lockdown measures shuttered the studios for an extended period. This year, they’ve finally started to open again, but fewer than before; many gave up their workspaces during the hiatus. Don’t miss the annual open studios; otherwise, most studios welcome visitors by appointment only.
PMQ
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PMQ was once the Police Married Quarters (i.e., residences for married policemen), opened in the 1950s in an effort to increase police recruitment. Following extensive renovations after the residences’ 2000 closure, the large seven-floor complex reopened in 2014 as a creative incubator of design studios and workshops. You’ll find some 100 of the coolest local artisans and indie boutiques today: In addition to fashion, jewelry, and gifts, there are art studios for the public to try painting and crafts, a board-game lab, a mahjong workshop (a sign refers to it as Chinese dominoes), and Hong Kong’s only food-themed library. There are also galleries and a slate of art exhibitions and design events throughout the year, and the courtyard often hosts pop-ups, markets, and art events. It’s ideal for sourcing locally made gifts and souvenirs or even just wandering down the hallways and chatting with designers in their ateliers.
