{"id":83973,"date":"2025-10-17T08:44:15","date_gmt":"2025-10-17T08:44:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/83973\/"},"modified":"2025-10-17T08:44:15","modified_gmt":"2025-10-17T08:44:15","slug":"pace-japan-director-makes-the-case-why-tokyo-is-asias-center-of-art","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/83973\/","title":{"rendered":"Pace Japan Director Makes the Case Why Tokyo is Asia\u2019s ‘Center of Art’"},"content":{"rendered":"

\n\tOne month after Tokyo<\/a> Gendai closed its third edition\u2014and its first in a new September slot\u2014with solid, if unspectacular<\/a>, sales, the head of Pace Japan<\/a> did a bit of cheerleading for the local market.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI want Tokyo to be the center of art in Asia,\u201d Kyoko Hattori, vice president of Pace Japan, told<\/a> the Japan Times on Tuesday. \u201cI want to see it happen.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThe arrival of Pace last year has been viewed, at least locally, as evidence that Tokyo has arrived. With some justification: Pace is now the only mega-gallery with a location in the city\u2014unless one counts Perrotin, which operates three spaces there and has a long engagement with Japan and its artists. The opening of Pace\u2019s gallery in the ritzy $4 billion Azabudai Hills development<\/a>, like the launch of Tokyo Gendai in 2023, was treated as a major event, with journalists and international collectors flying in<\/a> for the fanfare.<\/p>\n

\t\tRelated Articles<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Amedeo<\/p>\n

\n\tAs New York\u2013based dealer Sundaram Tagore told<\/a> Nikkei in September, Pace is seen as \u201ca guidepost for other galleries\u201d looking to expand into the Japanese market.<\/p>\n

\n\tThose expansions come amid cautiously optimistic data. The most recent UBS Art Basel Art Market Report found that Japan saw 2 percent growth last year, even as the wider art market contracted by 12 percent. Japan\u2019s primary competitors\u2014China (including Hong Kong) and Korea\u2014saw drops of 31 percent and 15 percent, respectively. Still, Japan operates on a different scale than Asia\u2019s leading market, China, which accounts for 15 percent of global art sales by value; Japan has a mere 1 percent, as does Korea.<\/p>\n

\n\tFor decades, Japan\u2019s art scene was viewed as local and largely inward-looking. That may be changing. Marc Glimcher told Nikkei that at Tokyo Gendai, works by Robert Longo \u201cflew off the walls,\u201d selling mainly to Japanese collectors. \u201cI don\u2019t know who these people were, but they flooded in,\u201d he said. Tagore, who also exhibited at the fair, described \u201ca robust response\u201d to the gallery\u2019s programming, which skews \u201cvery global.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI take that as an indication that the audience in Japan is becoming more connected to the international art world,\u201d Tagore said.<\/p>\n

\n\tThis isn\u2019t the first time the market has turned its sights toward Tokyo. During the boom years of the 1980s, Japanese collectors were paying record prices for Western art. What\u2019s different this time, however, is that this new wave appears to be arriving amid a broader market slowdown. The byword for collectors today is slowness, deliberation, and restraint\u2014a pace that Glimcher and Hattori both suggested suits Japanese buyers.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cTokyo has not been part of that overexcess,\u201d Glimcher told the Japan Times, referring to the speculative frenzy of the post-pandemic market.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cI find Japanese collectors are less focused on investment value,\u201d Hattori told the paper. \u201cIt\u2019s less transactional, which I think is great. They do not hire advisers \u2026 If you visit a Japanese collector\u2019s home, each collection is very different.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cIf we bring them global, high-quality works, they are very enthusiastic to buy,\u201d she added. \u201cThey\u2019re not interested in parties, but they really want to enjoy art.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tStill, there are structural challenges to Tokyo\u2019s ambitions. Taxes remain a persistent issue, though according to Nikkei, international galleries and fairs can now avoid a 10 percent upfront tax on artworks brought in for sale by applying for free-port status. The tax still must be paid\u2014but only once the work is sold. The government, meanwhile, seems to recognize the need for reform: a Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry report published last year called for \u201cincreasing investment in and demand of art\u201d to \u201chelp promote industrial restructuring.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\tThose moves appeared to buoy Glimcher\u2019s optimism. \u201cIf [Japan] can continue to recruit more galleries, and if the government makes it easier to do business in terms of taxes and moving art in and out of the country, they are primed to become an important city for art,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\n\tYet the global art world\u2019s expansion has lately shifted its gaze elsewhere. Art Basel and Frieze recently announced new fairs in Qatar and Abu Dhabi, respectively\u2014the former stacked with mega-gallery exhibitors. And Pace, for all its engagement with the Asian market, closed its Hong Kong location earlier this month. (Perrotin also just closed its Hong Kong gallery.)<\/p>\n

\n\tIn the Japan Times interview, Hattori acknowledged the question looming over Tokyo\u2019s ascent: whether international galleries have the capacity\u2014or appetite\u2014to operate in Hong Kong, Seoul, and Tokyo simultaneously.<\/p>\n

\n\t\u201cWould they open three locations in Asia? I think that\u2019s also the challenge,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"One month after Tokyo Gendai closed its third edition\u2014and its first in a new September slot\u2014with solid, if…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":83974,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[31],"tags":[442,498,499,500,501,156,1759,111,139,69,52374,11081],"class_list":{"0":"post-83973","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-arts-and-design","8":"tag-arts","9":"tag-arts-and-design","10":"tag-artsanddesign","11":"tag-artsdesign","12":"tag-design","13":"tag-entertainment","14":"tag-japan","15":"tag-new-zealand","16":"tag-newzealand","17":"tag-nz","18":"tag-pace-gallery","19":"tag-tokyo"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83973","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=83973"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83973\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/83974"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=83973"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=83973"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=83973"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}