Sotheby’s To Lean Towards Luxury Retail
By Camilla Alvarez-Chow
Exterior of Sotheby’s Maison in Landmark Chater, Central district, Hong Kong. Courtesy Sotheby’s.
The British-founded multinational auction house Sotheby's will move into its new Hong Kong headquarters named Sotheby’s Maison on July 27 in the luxury mall Landmark Chater in the Central district. This relocation—to a space formerly occupied by Italian high-end fashion brand Giorgio Armani—represents the company’s pivot to a luxury retail business model.
The 2,230 square-meter space will span two floors designed by Rotterdam-based architecture studio MVRDV. The ground floor is set to host museum-grade exhibitions and performances, as well as Sotheby’s signature auction exhibitions. For its opening, the auction house will showcase a comprehensive exhibition on the development of Buddhist art in “Bodhi: Masterpieces of Monumental Buddhist Art” (2024), alongside “ICE: Two Masterworks on Loan from the Long Museum” (2024) featuring German visual artist Gerhard Richter’s Eisberg (1982) and a rare Ru ware brushwasher, a type of Chinese pottery from the Song dynasty that was made circa 1100 AD in China. Additionally, a short film titled Another World (2024), voiced by English actor Charles Dance OBE, will be screened to commemorate Sotheby’s opening.
The first floor of Sotheby’s Maison will be dedicated to “a uniquely curated retail experience exploring an array of cross-category art, luxury, and collectibles. . . offered for instant purchase at prices ranging from HKD 5,000 to HKD 50 million,” as stated in a press release. Bringing its door closer to street level could potentially open new streams of revenues.
Recently, a report in June from Standard and Poor’s (S&P) Global Ratings announced that it had reduced Sotheby’s credit rating from a B to B- due to declining revenues and rising costs. Despite the financial woes, many major auction houses—not only Sotheby’s, but also Christie’s and Phillips—have ambitions to expand their businesses in Asia with recent investments in new headquarters, specifically in Hong Kong. The city will also soon see Christie’s new venue opening at The Henderson in Central this September.
Camilla Alvarez-Chow is an editorial assistant at ArtAsiaPacific.
