KOREA FOUNDATION

ASEAN GALLERY

Singapore's rise in the Asian art market
By JeongEun-gyeong, CEO of EK Art Gallery

After watching Hong Kong grow rapidly into one of the central markets of Asian art, the Singaporean government took the initiative to establish and implement specific policies to cultivate the industry. It started with Gillman Barracks’ project in 2012. It renovated the military barracks that had been vacant for a long time and gathered the art galleries that were scattered throughout the city as well as new art galleries to create a district with 15 of them. After creating exhibition spaces and holding extensive art events through the Singapore Art Week, the project organized an art fair and opened an art center and a museum to expand the overall pie of the art market.

Singapore Art Week, held every January, brings the city to life with over 100 art events in ten days. Art Stage Singapore, Singapore’s leading art fair, is also hosted at this time. During the four days of the fair, visitors flock to appreciate huge volumes of art introduced by 150-200 galleries around the world. Art Stage Singapore, planned at the Marina Bay Sands Convention Center, successfully became a world-class art fair comparable to Hong Kong’s Art Basel by recruiting Lorenzo Rudolf, one of Art Basel’s main directors. In 2015, it set up a booth for a special exhibition by Korean artists and introduced the Dansaekhwa style.

It was also the year that Singapore Pinacothèque de Paris opened. It is the first Asian branch of the largest private art museum in downtown Paris. A small building in Fort Canning Park, a former British military base, was remodeled into a beautiful art museum for the citizens. The innovative idea of establishing an Asian branch of a Parisian art museum inspired the oil-rich United Arab Emirates (UAE) to open the Abu Dhabi branch of the Louvre in 2017. In 2019, the National Gallery Singapore, which restored and connected the former City Hall and the Supreme Court buildings, also opened. With the completion of this museum, Singapore became the home to the largest art museum in Southeast Asia.

-Continued in the next issue-