Chinese buyers are showing up in Miami for seaside condos—and art:
“The new and younger generation of Chinese collectors is bilingual, educated in North America or Europe — they’re very international.”
The Chinese art boom has been fueled by the country’s new prosperity. China’s growing cadre of ultra-wealthy (more than 10,000 people worth at least $30million, for a total of $1.51trillion in 2013, according to a report by UBS and financial research firm Wealth-X) have invested significantly in real estate and art, says Christopher Tsai, a Chinese-American New York investment manager.
In Miami, Chinese nationals have spent $25million at the Related Group’s luxurious new tower ONE Paraiso and are also buying multimillion-dollar apartments at One Thousand Museum by Zaha Hadid. Not only can high-end condos and artworks rise in value quickly, they often seem like safe havens for Chinese wary of political or economic upheaval.
“There’s a fear you need to be protective of what you own,” says Tsai, who travels frequently to China and began collecting contemporary Chinese art in 2003. He has focused on Ai Weiwei, acquiring more than 40 pieces, one of which, Bowls of Pearls, he lent to the Pérez Art Museum Miami for last year’s show of the dissident Chinese superstar.
Such investment-oriented spending has fueled speculation from Chinese and Westerners, Tsai says. “You see people coming in just wanting to buy quickly, be the first, then you see the work appear at auction in a year or less. That wasn’t the case five years ago.”
China becoming a major player in international art world (The Miami Herald)
