The Wall Street Journal assembled a long litany of the power of the Asian art in the world marketplace. In the process, they isolated the growing excitement surrounding Southeast Asian art and Singapore’s role as its center:

In Singapore, work progressed on a 5,500 square-meter National Art Gallery, to be completed in 2013. The museum of Southeast Asian art from the 18th century onward will be housed in the refurbished 1920s City Hall and Supreme Court Buildings. Another major art initiative in the city-state was the opening of Singapore FreePort, an art-storage facility and a space for collectors to display their art, and Art Stage Singapore, an international contemporary-art fair that debuts next month. […] Elsewhere, collectors from Indonesia in particular pushed up the price of top-selling lots of Southeast Asian art at auction and at galleries. Among the most coveted names was Agus Suwage, who has been busy in his Jogyakarta studio preparing for his first New York show, due to open in March at Tyler Rollins Fine Art, one of the city’s top venues and the only major gallery in New York featuring top contemporary Southeast Asian works.

The Year of the Artist (Wall Street Journal)