It's been a couple of months since I last posted so I hope everyone is doing well!
It's also been well over a year since I last travelled outside of Canada - my last international trip was to Asia Week New York in March of 2020, just as the city was about to shut down! It's hard to fathom how much has changed since then. Hopefully with the vaccine rollouts we can all start safely traveling sometime in the latter part of this year.
Despite the international border restrictions, I've still been fortunate enough to do some Asian art valuation and appraisal work outside of Toronto. This includes smaller business trips to Ottawa and Montreal. And for the last few weeks, I've been in Vancouver working on a larger consulting project for Heffel Auction House. There will be more updates on this in a forthcoming blog, but essentially I am helping them put build an Asian art department!
In other updates, my latest Orientations article has been published. Based out of Hong Kong, the magazine focuses on all aspects of Asian art. Orientations is published six times a year and contains scholarly articles, auction and gallery updates and book reviews. Since the late 1970's, they have been a leading source of Asian art news for connoisseurs, collectors, and those working in the museum, gallery and auction fields.
I've been writing the Chinese art auction market trends for Orientations for about five years now. These articles typically go through Chinese art highlights from the previous season at the international auction houses Bonhams, Christie's and Sotheby's.
For this edition, I discuss the adjustments the international auction houses had to make in order to adapt to the ongoing global pandemic with respect to travel restrictions, business-getting, previews and live auctions.
Here are the first two pages of my latest Orientations article with illustrations of the highlight paintings that sold during the fall 2020 season:
The cover of the March/April issue of Orientations features a 16th Century Indian dagger depicting an entwined dragon and phoenix, one of the masterpieces from the David Collection in Copenhagen.
Orientations can be purchased at most museum book shops and through their website subscription form.
And if you want to read more of my work, you can always check out my Asian art blogs on Bidsquare.com. Based in New York, Bidsquare is a boutique auction platform founded in 2014 by six leading regional auction houses in the USA. The founding auction houses are:
Brunk Auctions, Asheville NC
Cowan's Auctions, Cincinnati OH
Hindman, Chicago IL
Pook & Pook Auctioneers and Appraisers, Downingtown PA
Rago Auctions, Lamberville NJ
Skinner, Boston MA
Currently, Bidsquare is the leading curated auction platform with listings from more than 100 of the world's leading auction houses and dealers. They have taken in close to USD 1 billion worth of bids since their formation.
At Bidsquare, I have the pleasure of being their Asian art consultant in vetting some of the Asian art sales before they go online. I am also a regular contributor to their 'On the Square' blogs since 2016.
These blogs typically preview major upcoming Asian art sales through selected highlight objects. Over the past two years, I have put together more thematic Asian art blogs that discuss topics such as:
Any ways, that's it for this edition of my blog. If you have any questions or comments, please feel free to contact me!
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