Late last month, Sotheby’s unveiled its new Maison in Central Hong Kong at Landmark Chater, a building previously occupied by the Armani/Fiori Hong Kong Chater House boutique in the heart of the city’s luxury district. With exclusive access from the street (very rare in this neighborhood), the two-story, 24,000-square-foot Maison is a hybrid that melds a high-end luxury retail environment with a meditative museum experience—something radically different from the typical auction exhibition space. Not by chance, the auction house chose the hashtag #SothebysAnotherWorld to describe the vibe of the new Hong Kong headquarters.
“Our Sotheby’s Maison has been long in the making,” said Nathan Drahi, managing director of Sotheby’s Asia, in a statement. “We envision this state-of-the-art space in Hong Kong to be the epicenter of culture for global visitors—a destination where generations of art and culture enthusiasts engage with and be inspired by extraordinary objects and experiences.”
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Working closely with the Rotterdam-based architectural firm MVRDV, Sotheby’s designed the Maison to offer visitors an immersive experience across the different floors, creating an initiatory path through the objects on view.
The journey starts on the first floor, which has been divided into seven salons. In a space that looks more like a luxury boutique of rarities or a wunderkummer, the Maison offers for immediate purchase over 200 objects spanning categories, geographies and ages, with prices ranging from HK$5,000 to HK$50 million. Each of the seven salons is a universe or “boutique” by itself, and potential buyers can stroll from a room dedicated to fossils to another for jewelry, African art or even sneakers, resulting in a shopping experience that is probably unique not just in Asia but anywhere. Imagine a concept store for the world’s wonders where an original Yoshitomo Nara work can be purchased with a priceless mammoth skull.
A mysterious curved portal leads to a more contemplative area of the ground floor, where aesthetic experiences await. It is here that Sotheby’s Maison will stage rotating museum-quality exhibitions, performances and the displays of top lots in its seasonal marquee auctions.
The central space is the dramatic, imposing Grotto, which is flanked by the Pantheon and the Sanctum, all meticulously handcrafted with wood in nuanced shades of dark burgundy and charcoal. The design of the entire ground floor was reportedly inspired by Chinese scholars’ rocks, revered in Chinese culture and Taoism as an expression of the restless, dynamic change and interplay of forces between creation and destruction that characterizes the universe.
In the Grotto and the Pantheon, Sotheby’s is presenting “Bodhi: Masterpieces of Monumental Buddhist Art,” which showcases monumental Buddhist sculpture tracing the development of Buddhist art. The more intimate Sanctum, which is adjacent to the Grotto, presents a conversation between two masterpieces from the Long Museum collection created a thousand years apart: Gerhard Richter’s mesmeric Eisberg and a Ru-ware brush washer, arguably the rarest and most valuable Chinese ceramic ever produced.
In September, the auction house will present in the same spaces the highlights of its Modern & Contemporary Art Evening and Day Auctions, followed by displays of items from the Luxury and Asian Art auctions in October.
Upstairs, Sotheby’s is showing Banksy’s Girl Without Balloon (retitled Love Is in the Bin), which became famous, or infamous, after partially shredding itself right after being sold for over £1 million at Sotheby’s in October of 2018. Following the event, the work was authenticated by Banksy with the new title, which sold again at Sotheby’s for £18 million in October of 2021, which further validated the work as a sort of “performance” piece residua.
Despite the articulated architecture and the highly scenographic design choices that dramatize, like in a theater, the auction experience, the new Maison space still feels cohesive thanks to the the open design and Sotheby’s classic blue and beige palette, which connects and unifies previously separate boutiques with walk-through spaces punctuated by epic showcases.
The ambitious presentation fills the space with sensations and stories, exemplifying the auction house’s commitment to providing a distinctive multi-dimensional art-buying experience as it grows its presence in the Asian and South Asian markets. It will be interesting to see if the recently announced $1 billion investment by the Abu Dhabi Wealth Fund will bring a similar approach to the Emirates and other global locations.
Next month, Sotheby’s will also relocate its New York flagship location to the iconic Breuer Building on New York’s Upper East Side museum line, which was previously home to the Whitney, the Met Breuer and (most recently) Frick Madison. During Art Basel Paris and Paris’ art week in mid-October, the auction house will also move its Parisian headquarters to a sumptuous palace at the heart of the luxurious Saint-Honoré neighborhood in an elegant five-story palace. Branded “Another World,” the upcoming relocations and improvement initiatives could prove transformative. With them, Sotheby’s hopes to position the auction house as an unmissable stop for people looking for a memorable art experience.