After a three-year-long campaign for a license Christie’s has finally been approved as the first international fine arts auction company to operate independently in Mainland China. For the past eight years, Christie’s has been limited in China to a licensing deal with Forever International Auction Co. Now the 247-year-old company has signed its own agreement with the City of Shanghai and plans to hold its first auction this fall according to the New York Times.
Christie’s Chief Executive Steven Murphy told the Wall Street Journal that they ultimately chose Shanghai in favor of Beijing, because the city is about to open a spate of museums that will likely attract audiences from across Asia. The Wall Street Journal further reports the city also has a surfeit of wealthy bankers who already collect art.
Christie’s rival auction house, Sotheby’s, who opened a joint venture last year in Beijing with Gehua, a state-owned media and entertainment company, is tied to a local partner but owns an 80% stake. Besides a comprehensive auction license, Christie’s can offer regular exhibitions, art import and exportation, art advisory, training and other services.
The world’s two biggest auction houses have long sought greater access to Mainland China. The announcement suggests that the Chinese government has further eased market restrictions.
“We’ve been dreaming about selling in China for many years,” François Curiel, president of Christie’s Asia, told the Wall Street Journal.
Furthermore, this moment also marks a turn in the company’s tumultuous relationship with the country: while Christie’s has benefited greatly in recent years from the boom in the Chinese art market — the number of clients from Mainland China bidding at Christie’s global auctions has doubled since 2008 — it fell into disfavor with the Chinese government in 2009. Two bronze sculptures, which were taken from the Summer Palace by foreign armies during the Second Opium War in 1860, were sold in Christie’s auction center in Paris despite the objections of Chinese authorities — though in the end the auction was questioned as being sabotaged when a Chinese collector won the bidding but refused to pay.
The company said the current agreement restricts it from dealing in “cultural relics.” Christie’s spokesperson Luyang Jiang Hildebrandt told ARTINFO. The company will trade mostly in contemporary Chinese art, jewelry, wine and watches.
Simultaneously, China’s own formidable auction houses — Poly Auction and China Guardian — have been expanding beyond China. Both started selling in Hong Kong late last year in an attempt to establish international credibility as well as to compete with the world’s two biggest auction houses where they are already well established.
