Liu Yiqian and Wang Wei, the Chinese language billionaire collector couple who based the Lengthy Museum in Shanghai, one of many nation’s most distinguished non-public artwork establishments, will promote a portion of their assortment via Sotheby’s in Hong Kong later this 12 months.
“Sotheby’s is honoured to be bringing to its Hong Kong sale rooms a really excellent group of works from the legendary assortment of Liu Yiqian and Wang Wei—two of the best collectors of our time,” says Nicholas Chow, Sotheby’s chairman, in an announcement. “Although the works to be supplied signify only a tiny fraction of the couple’s huge assortment, the scope of the providing, which spans all the things from works by the best names in artwork historical past to newer items by in the present day’s rising stars, is absolutely reflective of the expansive and enlightened method that has all the time underpinned Liu and Wang’s gathering journey.”
Proceeds from the forthcoming gross sales are “destined to additional key initiatives on the Lengthy museum” the assertion provides, and also will “fund future acquisitions and the continued fostering of cultural dialogues between completely different artists, geographies and generations”.
Liu, an entrepreneur famed for rising from a taxi driver to one in every of China’s richest folks, is the chair and cofounder of Guohua Life Insurance coverage. Within the first half of 2023, Guohua introduced losses of between $23.3m and $28.7m, in keeping with China’s Financial Info Newspaper.
In response to Sotheby’s assertion, round 50 work from the couple’s assortment can be bought, together with works by Amadeo Modigliani, Zao Wou-ki, Kazuo Shirago, Leonard Foujita, René Magritte, David Hockney, Matthew Wong, Dana Schutz, Nicolas Social gathering and Georgette Chen and Yayoi Kusama.
Sources near the story say that the couple may also promote round an additional 50 works at Sotheby’s in New York, and that the gross sales will embody at the least one main work from the gathering. Sotheby’s haven’t denied this declare.
Sotheby’s assertion avoids commenting on the way forward for the Lengthy Museum, which first opened in late 2012 in Shanghai. A second Shanghai location launched in 2014, and a Chongqing department opened within the Guohua Monetary Heart in 2016. Plans for a fourth location in Wuhan seem like tabled. China’s zero-Covid period noticed the closure of one other non-public museum, Guangzhou’s acclaimed Instances Museum, in late 2021 because of the monetary woes of its property firm backer.
Liu and Wang have for the previous decade been among the many most prolific artwork collectors worldwide in addition to avid supporters of Chinese language up to date artwork. A large sell-off of Chinese language artists beneath the present sluggish markets might dent pricing that till now has solely risen exponentially.
