This year’s edition of Asia Week New York, which kicked off Monday and runs until March 21, has already been impacted by the new tariffs against China, which President Donald Trump enacted earlier this year. Only six dealers of Chinese art are participating in the annual event, which showcases Asian art at galleries, museums, cultural institutions, and auction sales of historic antiques, furniture, as well as modern and contemporary artworks.
“People like Gisèle Croës, who have been coming for many years and many other dealers are not able to come now and able to import art into the United States,” chairman Brendan Lynch told ARTnews, referring to a specialist in ancient Chinese art from Brussels whose exhibition last year took place at Gagosian. “It’s not good, because it’s restricting things moving around, and that, as you know, is the life’s breath of the art world, terms of freedom to bring things where there is a market.”
As a result of the new tariffs, the lineup for this year’s Asia Week New York has significantly more Japanese art exhibitors (15, up from 12 last year), a growing number of Korean art exhibitors, as well as more contemporary offerings, such as works on paper and ceramics.
“Every country seems to be very focused on the younger artists, and younger people want to buy those artists,” Lynch said. “Each Asia Week always has a slightly different character to the previous one.”
Artworks from China and Hong Kong considered “informational materials” are currently not subject to the additional 20 percent tariffs, but furniture and antiques are, reports Artnet News. And the tariffs need to be paid for upfront by importers, not after a work has sold, like the temporary import scheme implemented in the UK after Brexit.
That has created an interesting situation for the sales of historic Chinese furniture and antiques at Christie’s, Sotheby’s and other auction houses, as the lots were delivered to the locations in New York prior to the new tariffs.
The top lot in the category is a large blue, white, and iron-red ‘Dragon’ dish, 19-inches wide, with a Qianlong seal mark, offered by Christie’s with an estimate of $1.2 million to $2.5 million. The dish last appeared at auction 35 years ago at Sotheby’s Hong Kong, as the cover lot for a sale on May 15, 1990.
Auction sales of South Asian modern and contemporary art continue to be strong at both Christie’s and Sotheby’s, with specialists at both houses telling ARTnews they do not anticipate any interruptions in the momentum this year.
“We have had no indication that there are so far any concerns,” Manjari Sihare-Sutin, vice president and worldwide co-head Sotheby’s modern and contemporary South Asian art department, told ARTnews. “Of course, nobody has a crystal ball, but the exhibition is officially open, I’ve had clients come in, and there hasn’t been any concern from them to say so. We are cautiously optimistic.”
Christie’s South Asian modern and contemporary art department has seen new collectors each season from all over the world. “New institutions are interested in the category, even in the primary market and in the museum world, there are lots of new shows and initiatives,” Nishad Avari, the New York–based department head told ARTnews, noting that a major show on Indian art at the Barbican Centre, which closed in January, drew a lot of new interest into the category. “That kind of activity eventually filters through to the to the auction market also. That’s very encouraging for us.”
While many of Asian Week New York’s auction sales take place online, Lynch said the event continues to be important for art professionals to gather in person as well as for prompting acquisitions by private collectors and institutions.
Even though the tariffs have made this process more complicated, Lynch said that art professionals are coping with the changes on a day-to-day basis, even if shipping is now much more time-intensive and expensive to deal with.
“At the end of the day, you know, people want to look at beautiful things and buy Asian art and have things presented to them,” he said, noting the work of provenance research, condition reporting, and background scholarship are all still being done by specialist art dealers.
“I think we’re used to things happening, but one doesn’t sort of quite take it all at once. And there’s usually a way around many of these new rulings,”Lynch told ARTnews. “It’s a question of learning what the rules are and how you can properly adhere to them. And I think that’s very much what we’re going through at the moment.”
Asia Week New York takes place until March 21.
