For two weeks in March, Hong Kong ran at full capacity: 240 galleries at Art Basel Hong Kong at the Convention and Exhibition Centre in Wan Chai, drawing 91,500 visitors; over 100 galleries at Art Central on the harborfront, its 11th and largest edition; three new boutique fairs in Central, Tai Hang, and Wan Chai; four new art spaces; at least five auction previews; over a dozen institutional shows and nonprofit art space exhibitions; and upward of 60 gallery openings across town. The phrase most overheard among collectors and gallerists was: “Are you surviving?”

The mood was buzzing, if a little manic; and on paper the numbers were respectable enough, prompting murmurs that “Hong Kong is back” with added emphasis “even with the war in the Middle East,” after a dire 2025 that saw mega-galleries Pace and Perrotin shutter their spaces in the city and auction results slump to an eight-year low. Blue-chip galleries reported a handful of seven-figure transactions for canonical names. Top line sales included David Zwirner’s placement of a large Liu Ye snow scene painting, Snow White (2006), not seen in the market for over a decade and taken straight back down right after VIP day, for USD 3.8 million, and a 2002 painting by Marlene Dumas for USD 3.5 million. At Hauser & Wirth, Louise Bourgeois’s four-panel work on paper À Baudelaire (#1) (2008) and fabric sculpture Couple (2002) sold for USD 2.95 million and USD 2.2 million respectively, the latter to an Asian foundation. The gallery also placed two works by Lee Bul, whose retrospective is on view across the harbor at M+, including a mixed-media sculpture Untitled (“Infinity” wall) and a mixed-media diptych, Perdu CCXXVII (both 2026), for USD 275,000 and USD 260,000 respectively, both with private collections in Asia. Notable sales at White Cube included Tracey Emin’s striking painting Take Me To Heaven (2024), sold to an Asian collector for GBP 1.2 million (USD 1.6 million), riding on her current major survey exhibition at the Tate Modern in London, and Mona Hatoum’s sculpture Still Life (medical cabinet) IV (2024), which went for GBP 225,000 (USD 300,000).