Press and Media Coverage.
Jeremy Goldkorn
September 24, 2024
The scholar and journalist Kejia Wu is the author of A Modern History of China’s Art Market, a fascinating book that examines the relationship between the Chinese government’s push for cultural “soft power” and its desire for control. In the book, Wu looks at the rise of contemporary art and a market for it after the end of the Cultural Revolution; the oddity of China’s parallel art systems: one highly ideological, censored, and state-organized market, and the other market-oriented; and five Chinese artists from different generations whom she profiles.
Jeremy Goldkorn spoke to Kejia Wu in 2023 about her book, and then edited and updated this Q&A with her by email in 2024...
RÉMY JARRY
April 16, 2024
An art historian and columnist based in New York, Kejia Wu has dedicated her career to the Chinese contemporary art scene and its market since the 1990s. Relocating to the United States fifteen years ago, she has amassed unique expertise over the years, publishing various reports, notably for TEFAF, and contributing to the Chinese edition of the Financial Times. She authored the first book on the modern history of the art market in China, A Modern History of China’s Art Market, which was published last year. In her work, Kejia Wu sheds light on a lesser-known historical episode: the confiscation of artworks and antiques by the Red Guards during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) and their partial restitution under the supervision of Xi Zhongxun (1913-2002), father of Xi Jinping. This period was succeeded by the gradual integration with Hong Kong’s art market and the emergence of the first Chinese auction houses from the 1990s onward...
RÉMY JARRY
April 10, 2024
L’historienne de l’art et journaliste brosse dans un livre récemment paru l’histoire des rapports de la Chine à l’art, depuis les destructions ou confiscations de collections privées par les Gardes rouges jusqu’à son accession aujourd’hui à la 2e place dans le marché mondial.
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Originaire de Wuhan, Kejia Wu a participé au développement de la scène artistique en Chine, notamment en tant que cofondatrice de l’Emac (East Modern Art Centre) à Pékin, un centre d’art – aujourd’hui disparu – installé dans un ancien espace industriel du textile et inauguré à la fin des années 1990. Depuis son expatriation aux États-Unis en 2009 et l’obtention d’un MBA à l’université Yale, elle a suivi avec attention l’évolution de la scène contemporaine chinoise et de son marché. Dans la foulée de ses divers rapports, notamment pour la foire Tefaf, et de ses contributions à la version chinoise du Financial Times, elle a publié le premier ouvrage sur l’histoire moderne du marché de l’art en Chine, paru en 2023...
March 18, 2024
...That resumption of travelling, and collecting, overseas is largely regional, says Kejia Wu, art historian and author of A Modern History of China’s Art Market. China’s frequency of flights to Europe and North American remain far fewer than pre-pandemic. ‘People’s outlook about the future and the economy’ now shape collecting habits, says Wu. ‘The macroeconomic outlook is not picking up yet. I believe it’s more of people’s sentiment about prospects has the biggest impact on their spending behavior. It seems that people are trying to prepare for what might be coming, so they feel they probably should not spending as much.’
Last year’s underperforming sale at Sotheby’s Hong Kong from the Long Museum collection, the largest single owner sale out of China in a decade, also damped spirits. ‘There seems to be a slowdown in terms of collecting until they see the economic prospects improve,’ Wu says. The sale, including of works bought only a few years ago from galleries, was ‘a signal for other collectors who might be evaluating this situation. It probably will give them a second thought.’
Art professionals are banking on better business this year, Wu adds, ‘because sentiment was that in 2023 things did not pick up as much as people had expected.’ After China’s intense lockdowns and cancelled fairs of 2022, ‘last year things went back to normal and though trading activities picked up I don’t think it has come back to the pre COVID level.’...
February 21, 2024
...“Today, the world is dazzled by the rise of South Korea and its cultural products, with the art market, the art, and a lot of its institutional exhibitions being orchestrated by state-driven initiatives. But back in the 2000s, Chinese contemporary held that spotlight. But it was different in a key way: the western world—and money—was driving the hype, as Kejia Wu, researcher and author of A Modern History of China’s Art Market.
'The western world was fascinated by this very strong China story. They wanted to understand better and get to know more about it, and were willing to provide more opportunities,' said Wu on a phone call. She was co-founder of the East Modern Art Center (EMAC), the first nonprofit contemporary art center in Beijing.”...
December 3, 2023
Liu Yiqian, the Chinese billionaire, swiped his American Express Centurion card 24 times. Surrounded by the Chinese art world’s most elite collectors, Liu charged $36 million on his credit card to purchase “the holy grail” of Chinese art: a tea cup from the Ming dynasty. The cup, which is more than 500 years old, is only 8 centimeters in diameter and adorned with chickens pecking at their feed. It was the summer of 2014, and Liu, a former taxi driver on the streets of Shanghai, knew he was making history. In front of invited media at Sotheby’s auction house in Hong Kong, the self-taught stock trader and founder of investment firm Sunline Group, poured tea into the cup and, with cameras flashing, casually drank from it.
The sheer swagger of the moment underscored a larger trend in the art Cup’...
November 9, 2023
China’s biggest art fairs are back in a first post-Covid test of collectors’ appetite, at a time when the economy is facing multiple headwinds.
West Bund Art & Design and ART021 both opened to VIP collectors on Nov. 9, with the general public invited in the days following. The former, sponsored by UBS Group AG, is in its 10th year with 185 galleries, while the latter is in its 11th year with 150 exhibitors.
The Shanghai fairs, which will be mainland China’s first major art events since the end of Covid Zero, come amid an uncertain global backdrop where even ultra-high-net-worth collectors are pulling back on art purchases. Years of pandemic restrictions, a troubled economy and a prolonged real estate crisis have especially battered Chinese sentiment.
“It is true that sometimes in economic downturn, collectors can see buying certain art as a way to hedge against risk, but that can also lead to the readjustment of valuation,” said Kejia Wu, art historian and author of the book A Modern History of China’s Art Market...
October 5, 2023
...“About 25 per cent of the artworks offered have been acquired over the past three years, mostly through top galleries,” said Wu Kejia, art historian and author of A Modern History of China’s Art Market. “The fact that they are circulating within such a short period of time
may be a concern for Western blue-chip galleries.” such a short period of time may be a concern for Western blue-chip galleries.”
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“The Long Museum still holds a large number of significant artworks Liu and Wang have collected since the 1990s,” art historian Wu said, adding that the sale may be a “pilot” to test the market’s reception. “What is offered in this sale is only a very small portion of the museum’s permanent collection.”
September 29, 2023
The Chinese journalist and lecturer Kejia Wu displays her deep knowledge of the Chinese art market in this new book. It offers a thorough, English-language analysis of the market, its origins, its extraordinary growth over the past 30 years and its uneasy relationship with official government policy. As a columnist for the Financial Times China and author of Tefaf’s China Art Market report in 2019, Wu is ideally placed to tell this story, and she does so in fascinating detail...
May 29, 2023
...Chinese billionaires were often delighted to announce their big-ticket purchases. In 2013, a retail magnate bought a Picasso for $28 million at Christie’s, following up with a $20 million Monet at Sotheby’s in 2015. The same year, a stock investor spent $170 million at Christie’s for a Modigliani.
“It is a combination of vanity, investment and building their own brand,” said Kejia Wu, who taught at Sotheby’s Institute of Art and is the author of a new book on China’s art market...
May 25, 2023
...As the art historian Kejia Wu points out in A Modern History of China’s Art Market, the Communist government systematically confiscated the possessions of prominent families during the Mao era. Some artworks went to top party officials who fancied themselves connoisseurs. Others were kept in warehouses and formed the basis of China’s art auction industry, which restarted in the 1990s. And some were bought at steep discounts by state-run institutions, such as the Palace Museum, which gave them as gifts to foreigners. Instead of referring to these well-known facts, a video on the Humboldt Forum’s website ends with the bizarre assertion that the objects’ provenance can be determined only by collaborating closely with Chinese colleagues—who work for the same state and the same institution that seized them from the Chinese public...
Gareth Harris
April 26, 2023
A publication out next month, A Modern History of China’s Art Market, provides a detailed analysis of how China’s art trade has exploded over the past three decades. Author Kejia Wu points out in her introduction that “back in 1992, art transaction volume was so low that a standalone auction law framework had not yet been necessary to be enacted”. Today, the two largest art auction houses in China are catching up with western peers. Wu says that in 2021, total turnover of sales at Poly Auctions amounted to Rmb11.1bn ($1.72bn), 80 per cent of which was Beijing Poly, the rest Poly Hong Kong...
May 3, 2019
...According to Kejia Wu, Professor at Sotheby’s Institute New York and Columnist for FTChinese, major houses like Christie’s and Sotheby’s are dedicated to investing significantly into data collection and analysis, as well as creating streamlined e-commerce interfaces.
Galleries and auction houses must offer fast, secure and simple purchasing processes. Savvy collectors expect to engage in live settings as well as online. It is as important to incorporate technology into the art fair experience, by way of cashless art fairs and mobile apps, as it is to accommodate multimillion-dollar transactions online. They must also invest in e-commerce infrastructure and database management and analytics to provide easy-to-use interfaces for clients and a cleaner client database for internal use.
To remain competitive, they must know their evolving audience. Investing in wealth intelligence enables galleries and auction houses to find and engage wealthy art collectors and wealthy art enthusiasts. The ability to search for potential collectors by age, net worth, location and other metrics is especially useful to those wanting to target wealthy millennials who may be relatively new to art collecting or seeking to start a collection....
April 23, 2019
Kejia Wu spent a decade developing cultural projects in the Chinese capital. This included founding its first contemporary art centre – before the 798 Art District and UCCA – though unfortunately, it was destroyed some time later. After obtaining an MBA at Yale, she decided to move to New York, where she first worked in the office of the Sotheby’s CEO on special Asia-related projects. In 2015, she began teaching at the Sotheby’s Institute. She was the one who designed and produced the 2019 TEFA report, dedicated this year to the Chinese art market: a fascinating overview in a singular format. How did this report come about? Patrick van Maris van Dijk, TEFAF's CEO, approached me, suggesting the idea of carrying out a study dedicated to the Chinese art market. Of course I went along with him! But it was clear to me that in view of its "youth", it was crucial to dwell on its history to give a clear idea of its organisation and get an inkling of how it might be in the future. China began opening out to the world exactly forty years ago. And it's only been a member of the WTO since 2001…
Melanie Gerlis
March 15, 2019
China’s many private museums, whose owners have proved a boon to the art market in recent years, face an uncertain future. So finds this year’s Art Market Report on the country, written by Kejia Wu, a faculty member of Sotheby’s Institute of Art and a columnist for Financial Times Chinese. The report was commissioned by the Tefaf art fair, which opened in Maastricht this week. The exact number of private museums in China is something of a moving feast, but Kejia reckons on at least 1,500 (of 5,000 total museums), based on an announcement last November from China’s Ministry of Culture.
March 15, 2019
Some of China’s most influential private collectors reveal how much they have spent and what they plan to collect in the latest Tefaf art market report published today as the 32nd edition of the Maastricht fair opens to the public (16-24 March).
The research also highlights that without a tax benefit system in place for cultural philanthropy efforts, a number of private museums in China will have difficulty surviving over the next ten years...