May 29, 2012, 1:41 pm

By CAROL VOGEL

The Tate in London has received a gift of nine artworks by major 20th-century British artists, including a David Hockney, a Lucian Freud and a Rachel Whiteread.

The banker and philanthropist Ian Stoutzker and his wife, Mercedes, of Salzburg, Austria, who have been generous supporters of the arts in Britain, selected the artworks from their holdings because they fill gaps in the Tate’s collection, the couple said.

“The gift was an initiative from the Stoutzkers,’’ Nicholas Serota, the director of the Tate, said at a news conference on Tuesday. “They don’t receive any tax benefit from this gift but in the current climate they were very keen to make it public because they wanted to encourage others to give works to the national collection.’’

The works will go on display together at Tate Britain in October.

May 22, 2012, 4:47 PM
By THE NEW YORK TIMES

The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston has received a bonanza from one of its longtime trustees, according to a report in The Boston Globe.

Saundra Lane has given the museum 6,000 photographs, 100 works-on-paper and 25 paintings. Included in the donation is the entire photographic estate of Charles Sheeler, which amounts to some 2,500 photographs, along with the same number of images by Edward Weston. There are also 500 photographs by Ansel Adams.

The works-on-paper are primarily by American masters, including 20 drawings and watercolors by Arthur Dove, 20 by Sheeler and seven by Stuart Davis.

The gift comes more than 20 years after Ms. Lane and her husband, William, who died in 1995, gave the institution 90 American paintings and works-on-paper by artists like Georgia O’Keeffe, Marsden Hartley and Jacob Lawrence. Many of these canvases hang in galleries named after the couple in the museum’s American wing.

Cloud City, this summer’s commission for the roof garden of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

By ROBERTA SMITH

Published: May 25, 2012

Participatory art is all the rage these days, an ever-expanding category and, increasingly, a means for museums to signal their hipness to the younger, broader audiences they so desperately want to attract. Nothing says accessible like something you interact with physically.

Such art comes in many guises. It can range from relatively domestic tasks, like cooking a meal, to intricate trompe l’oeil environments that replicate or exaggerate huge chunks of reality. Somewhere in between are essentially abstract structures that sometimes involve the use of lights or mirrors, or sometimes jungle-gym-like arrangements that you navigate one way or another, walking under or through, or climbing over, perhaps pausing to sit or lie down.

Often borrowing from science, design or architecture, they might be described as fun-house formalism. It’s not all bad, but a lot of it is fairly mindless.

You could probably trace its origins partly to Richard Serra’s disorienting torqued ellipses of steel of the ’90s. Among the most extreme and certainly the least time-consuming recent iterations are Carsten Höller’s slide-through tubes. One of the most successful is Anish Kapoor’s giant, extravagantly reflective, biomorphic stainless-steel sculpture, nicknamed “The Bean,” in Millennium Park in Chicago.

Tomás Saraceno’s “Cloud City” is a particularly prominent example of fun-house formalism by virtue of its being the latest summertime commission for the roof garden of the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It consists of a 28-foot-high aggregate of 16 interconnected 12- and 14-sided polyhedrons the size of small rooms that are made of polished steel and clear plexiglass. By being reflective or see-through, they greatly complicate and even discombobulate the experience of the structure and everything around it.

The Met is calling the piece site-specific, and it certainly benefits from having great views to reflect, but really it is just a big, climbable piece of plop art, amenable to most any rooftop or plaza. Clearly the museum was hoping to repeat the triumph of Mike and Doug Starn’s “Big Bambú,” a looming, walk-on, bamboo-and-bungee-cord scaffoldinglike structure that enveloped the roof two summers ago like an architectural growth.

The Saraceno lacks such an organic feel, even though it resembles an enlarged model of molecules or a cluster of shiny if quite heavy soap bubbles. Walk up and through it (15 visitors at a time, with timed tickets), and it becomes adamantly Piranesian. You find yourself sorting through the elaborate, often dizzying, interpenetrating reflections of its structure, the sky, the Met, the city, Central Park. Up becomes down; the towers and facades of Central Park West seem to change places with Fifth Avenue’s.

You see yourself, or your fellow visitors, everywhere. Sometimes the modules close in on you, like little boat cabins; sometimes they resemble open cockpits, like the one Stuart Little strapped to the back of his trusty pigeon.

It is fun up to a point, like a perception-testing science experiment or a bit of walk-in Cubism expanded to the scale of an architectural folly, but it’s not very original. Futuristic architectural complexity has been better conjured by a host of other artists, including Franz Ackermann and Sarah Sze. Olafur Eliasson has orchestrated far more effective perception-twisting, walk-in environments.

But from certain points, especially in a prowlike dead-end module near the top, you’ll also enjoy some of the best views of Central Park’s green ocean of treetops ever, or at least since “Big Bambú.” They come as an immense, calming relief from the forced and busy artifice of the piece.

Richard Perry/The New York Times
Tomás Saraceno's sculpture is open to the public on the roof of the Met.

Mr. Saraceno, 39, who was born in Argentina and lives in Frankfurt, has an exhibition career barely a decade long, and a résumé that bristles with interdisciplinary collaborations. Perhaps with reason, he is widely admired as a visionary. On paper, at least, much of his work optimistically predicts a future when people will live above the earth in mutating, cloudlike cities, free of the tensions of nationalism.

In exhibitions, he often gives viewers a further taste of this vision with a variety of immense, ingeniously engineered, suspended spheres. Made of clear plastic, anchored by black elastic cords or flexible geodesic networks of cables, they can often be (gingerly) inhabited — walked through, sat in or lain on. They look astounding, hovering above the big halls that museums increasingly design to house such spectacles, and suggest a playful generosity of spirit, but they also resemble big, pillowy, transparent trampolines.

Even so, his best efforts may fit more easily into the realm of scientific or technical feats than into that of art. In 2010, with the help of a sizable team of scientists, specialized photographers and computer programmers, he built “14 Billions,” supposedly the first three-dimensional model of a black widow spider’s web — a greatly enlarged, walk-in version made with black elastic cord that was exhibited in Sweden and Britain. In photographs it looks for all the world like a crazed piece of fiber art; learning its inspiration makes it seem more appropriate to a natural history museum.

The previous year Mr. Saraceno filled the premier gallery of the 2009 Venice Biennale with an immersive installation of lacy, tethered polygonal orbs of black elastic that suggested transparent brains, exploding stars and dandelion puffballs. Its very title — “Galaxy Forming Along Filaments, Like Droplets Along the Strands of a Spider’s Web” — pinpoints the seamless slide from macro- to microcosmic that characterizes many of Mr. Saraceno’s efforts. It also evokes the view among some physicists that the structures of spider webs hold clues to the origins of the universe, further evidence of the interdisciplinary usefulness of his pieces.

It can be interesting to read about Mr. Saraceno’s art, especially the incredible effort involved in realizing it, but as you read quotations from his highly knowledgeable, skilled, enthusiastic collaborators, the works also assume a too-big-to-fail aspect. Too many people enjoy working on, bouncing on and navigating these things. They must be good.

But the cloud of admiring discussion is largely tangential to the congenial, rather ordinary structure on the Met’s roof, which is there to be considered as a work of environmental sculpture, not a hypothesis about the future or the nature of the universe.

Buzzy, kaleidoscopic effects aside, “Cloud City” is weak in the here and now: slightly creaky, devoid of any feeling for materials or sense of craft. To be fair, it departs from  Mr. Saraceno’s prevailing use of pliable plastic and the cocoonlike softness this material permits; he doesn’t seem as adept, yet, with rigidity and metal.

He has tried to soften the brittleness of “Cloud City” and to complicate its optics by stringing some of the modules with black-cord polygons similar to those that figured in his Venice piece. But these seem little more than decorative afterthoughts, Darth Vader versions of the big white snowflake that hangs every Christmas above Fifth Avenue and 57th Street.

The recurring mantra about Mr. Saraceno’s work is that it combines architecture, art and science. It does, but unequally: Art is the loser, the part he has thought through and connected to the least.

The natural world is implicitly, elaborately, endlessly interesting as is, without one iota of human intervention. Nature and the built environment affect and shape everyday life in myriad, unavoidable ways. His work underscores these truisms: nature as an endless source of inspiration, human need as a constant prod to innovation. But on the roof of the Met, at least, it largely skirts the challenges of transformation and originality that might make it of more lasting interest as art.

“Tomás Saraceno on the Roof: Cloud City” is on view through Nov. 4 at the Metropolitan Museum of Art; (212) 535-7710, metmuseum.org.

 

• By KIMBERLY CHOU

  May 25, 2012, 8:36 p.m. ET

(Philip Montgomery for The Wall Street Journal

Ellsworth Kelly with two of his plant drawings earlier this week in New York. 'Shape and color are my two strong things,' he says.

Throughout his career, American abstract painter and sculptor Ellsworth Kelly—famed for panels of saturated color, grids of varying shades like organized confetti and shapes layered upon each other—has nurtured a second occupation: closely observed drawings of plants.

On June 5, 74 of these works—six decades' worth—will go on view at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art.

"When I see a white piece of paper, I feel I've got to draw," Mr. Kelly said. "And drawing for me is the beginning of everything."

"Plant Drawings" includes his first of the genre, made in Boston and Paris in the late 1940s, as well as others made as recently as last year in upstate New York. Mr. Kelly describes his earliest attempts as "a little brutal," and his later work, refined to contour lines and "voluptuous" shapes, as more sophisticated. "When I finish, when I compare it to what I looked at, it's never as good. Nature wins," he said. "But now, 40 years, 30 years, 20 years later, I see that I was pretty good."

Mr. Kelly, 89 years old this month, spoke to The Wall Street Journal this week. Below, an edited transcript.

Wall Street Journal: When did you begin to draw plants?

Ellsworth Kelly: "Ailanthus" [1948] is the first plant drawing that I did, in Boston. Later on you'll see a drawing of just the branch that I made, 40 years later. "Hyacinth" [1949] was the first one I did when I was in Paris. It was cold and the hotels were not very well heated, so I bought a flower in the flower market and brought it into the hotel room to think about spring.

In Paris, I continued drawing constantly, people, and then when I got back to New York, I drew plants, rather. In my studio down in Coenties Slip, I had a loft with a roof. I planted sunflowers and all kinds of things on the roof. From then on, in the summers, I would continue to draw.

“'Drawing plants has always led me into my paintings and my sculptures.'”

Why and how do you draw?

My ideas come, and I draw. And I draw because I have to note down my ideas. Not so much in the plant drawings. I have to see my plants.

© Ellsworth Kelly/Metropolitan Museum of Art

Detail of 'Apples,' by Ellsworth Kelly

All my paintings are usually done in drawing form, very small. I make notations in drawings first, and then I make a collage for color. But drawing is always my notation. And I think artists all work that way really. I'm not special. But I like plants, and I don't think anyone else draws like this, today. I'm special in that way.

How do the plant drawings speak to your relationship to shapes?

The negative space is like one of my shapes, and when you look at a drawing of mine you can call off the number [of shapes]. Matisse draws what I call the essence of the plants. He leaves a shape open. He'll do a leaf and not close it. Everybody used to say, oh, I got it all from Matisse, and I said, "Not really."

[Mine] is a different kind of spirituality. It's more a portrait of a plant. I do the contours, and I make space by overlapping. I don't want to put shading in because they're about drawing, not about shading.

Shape and color are my two strong things. And by doing this, drawing plants has always led me into my paintings and my sculptures.

Write to Kimberly Chou at kimberly.chou@wsj.com

A version of this article appeared May 26, 2012, on page C20 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: An Abstract Master Puts On a Plant Show.

Todd Heisler/The New York Times
The heirs of Malevich sought to recover paintings, including the ones displayed above center and right.

By DOREEN CARVAJAL

The lending and borrowing of famous artworks is the essence of cultural exchange between museums in the United States and abroad. So routine is the practice, and so universally valued, that the American government has traditionally protected it with a law that shields a lent work from being seized by anyone with a claim to legal ownership while the art is on display here.

In recent years, though, American museum directors have come to fear that this safeguard has eroded, and that foreign museums, dreading entanglement in costly ownership battles, are more hesitant to make loans. So they have asked Congress to increase the security for global art swaps.

But a nonpartisan effort to do so, which sailed through the House of Representatives on a voice vote in March, has slowed in the Senate amid an unexpected storm of protest from those who say it goes too far in blocking efforts by owners to recover looted treasures. The bill would prevent all claims, except those filed by families whose valuables were taken by the Nazis in World War II. But even they will find the process harder if the bill becomes law, opponents say. Other scholars and legal experts question why the Holocaust alone, among atrocities affecting ownership, is being afforded special treatment.

“This is a master attempt to put away all the legal claims,” said Marc Masurovsky, a historian and co-founder of the Holocaust Art Restitution Project. “How can you excuse 28 different kinds of plunder and only outlaw one subset of one subset? What is the point here? The only people who have anything to gain are the museum directors. So we’re basically saying it’s fine to plunder?”

The driving force in favor of the stronger legislation, known as the Foreign Cultural Exchange Jurisdictional Immunity Clarification Act, has indeed been the Association of Art Museum Directors. The organization is concerned that it is no longer enough for museums to arrange for a special waiver from the State Department to shield a work from seizure while it’s on loan for an exhibition in the United States.

In Paris, the International Council of Museums was initially in favor of the new legislation, but, given the criticism, is now encouraging “further consultation,” according to Julien Anfruns, director general of that organization, which offers mediation as an alternative to court.

The issue is particularly important in the United States because victims of looted art consider this country a legal refuge where they can press claims against powerful state institutions in Eastern Europe and Russia.

  But concern on the part of American museum directors has grown since a federal court ruling in a 2005 case said that although the waivers can prevent outright seizures, they do not block claimants from filing lawsuits to recover artworks.

The ruling came in a lawsuit filed by the heirs of the abstract painter Kazimir Malevich, who sought to recover paintings from the Stedelijk in Amsterdam while they were on loan for an American exhibition. The Dutch museum believed its State Department waiver protected the works from seizure. But the judge ruled that the family could still sue.

The new bill, sponsored by Senators Dianne Feinstein, Democrat of California, and Orrin Hatch, Republican of Utah, would in effect overturn the judge’s decision and bar lawsuits, except those related to art looted by the Nazis or their agents. The bill would cover loans from the state-owned foreign museums like the Louvre or the Prado, but not private ones.

“If lenders perceive a potential risk, it can prevent artifacts from traveling and therefore potentially deny people in our community the opportunity to learn about cultures,” said Elizabeth Pierce, a spokeswoman for the Cincinnati Museum Center in Ohio, the home state of Representative Steve Chabot, who introduced the legislation in the House.

Russia, for example, has banned art loans to the United States, fearing that works could be seized because of a continuing legal battle in the United States with the Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidic movement over 40,000 books and manuscripts that are in Russian government possession. (To reduce tensions, the movement has promised not to sue, but the ban remains in place.)

In sponsoring the legislation, Senator Feinstein cited exhibitions in her state that “may have been endangered,” including one last year at the de Young Museum in San Francisco featuring loans from the Picasso Museum in Paris. A spokeswoman for the Picasso museum, Emilie Augier-Bernard, said she was not aware that anyone had raised claims regarding any of those works.

Despite the efforts to exempt Holocaust-era claims, the fiercest opposition to the bill has come from those who maintain that the exception is too narrowly drawn because it covers only people who lost art directly to the Nazis or their agents.

Experts say many Jewish families lost art, not directly to the Nazis, but because they were pressured to abandon it as they fled or had to sell pieces quickly for a fraction of their worth. Opponents of the bill, like the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, a New York organization that seeks restitution for Jewish victims of Nazi persecution, contend that the bill would prevent even these heirs from suing. Some opponents said that they believed that the bill was fast-tracked without a hearing in the House not because Congressional officials did not anticipate opposition, but because museums wanted to be discreet about pushing legislation that would block people from reclaiming looted art.

“Clearly, this is an effort to get the bill passed in the middle of the night,” said Charles Goldstein, a New York lawyer for the Commission for Art Recovery, which works on Holocaust restitution cases. Mr. Chabot’s office said the bill moved swiftly because support was bipartisan and because there was no opposition at the time of the House vote.

Dan Monroe, president of the Association of Art Museum Directors, defended the legislation’s special handling of art looted by the Nazis, as opposed to works that might have been taken during, say, the Cambodian civil war or the Bolshevik Revolution. He described the Holocaust as “so massive and egregious that there are few if any other situations that rise to the same level of injustice.”

“To assure the ability to present art and culture to the American public from sources around the world,” he continued, “there are some inherent limits to how museums can act to redress all possible injustices.”

But others are uneasy about granting special treatment.

Derek Fincham, an assistant professor at South Texas College of Law in Houston who specializes in cultural heritage law, said the exclusion probably also reflected the notion that the bill would be difficult to pass without an exception for Holocaust-era claims.

“To put it bluntly, how many Cambodians donate to political campaigns?” he said. “All of this goes back to political influence on a money level, which is unfortunate.”

Corinne Hershkovitch, a lawyer in Paris who specializes in recovering plundered art, said she questioned whether a bill that tried to distinguish between the severity of atrocities was sound. “There should be a common system for all looted art,” she said. “If you offer protections just for one group, it will seem illegitimate.”

Allan Gerson, a specialist in international law who has a client trying to recover paintings seized by the Bolsheviks, agreed. “Why are Nazi storm troopers looting art any different from Bolshevik storm troopers?” he said.

In California in 2009, a federal appeals court struck down a state law that sought to extend the statute of limitations in lawsuits filed there against museums and galleries by people who had art taken from them during the Holocaust. The ruling did not focus on the special nature of the protection, but on constitutional flaws in the statute. When California enacted amended legislation in 2010, it covered artworks lost in all periods.

Jo Backer Laird, a lawyer who specializes in art law, said the pending Senate bill was founded on the view “that the Holocaust is simply different.”

“It is a view,” she continued, “that has a compelling philosophical and moral basis — but one that may be more difficult to justify and implement as a matter of law.”

By JOANNE LEE-YOUNG

Photographs by Philipp Englehorn for The Wall Street Journal

The living area

Hong Kong

After graduating from Cornell University's architecture school, friends Kevin Chin-Kwok Lim and Edward Yujoong Kim moved to Hong Kong, one of the priciest real estate markets on earth. Mr. Lim, 26, who grew up in the city, moved back in with his parents and grandmother. Mr. Kim, 27, stuffed himself and his girlfriend into a 180-square-foot apartment.

Fortunately the duo also hold the keys to a 3,900-square-foot warehouse loft that has evolved into an office, exhibition space and place to stretch out, entertain and relax.

This is not a fancy condo conversion. The loft is on the 19th floor of a working warehouse in an industrial part of Hong Kong. Visitors have to steer around stacked cartons and workers pushing bags of chemical powders into service elevators. It's dank and charmless until an aluminum door slides open to reveal a huge open space with white ceilings, walls and light tiled floors.

Mr. Lim's father, William Lim, 54, a Hong Kong-based architect, artist and art collector, bought the loft in November 2010 for $1 million. He used to rent three separate spaces: an art studio, an apartment for storing his collection and another to show it off. When he saw this place, it was a chance to consolidate. He estimated spending about $142,000 to renovate.

There are few walls. A modern kitchen is at the left; a beige sofa and coffee table made from flatbed trolleys topped with acrylic carves out a living area. A large table, a few chairs and a giant, orange floor lamp in one corner marks the office. A long, glass-enclosed balcony seals out much of the noise from a massive pit below filled with cranes, dump trucks, cement mixers and bulldozers, constructing a new subway station.

Photos: Industrial Living in Hong Kong

On the 19th floor of a working warehouse, a vast loft serves as a multi-purpose hangout.

Philipp Engelhorn for The Wall Street Journal

After graduating from Cornell University's architecture school, friends Kevin Chin-Kwok Lim and Edward Yujoong Kim moved to Hong Kong, one of the priciest real estate markets on earth.

The loft's centerpiece and main sleeping area is a striking 20-by-13-foot rectangular structure. It's made up of 163 pieces of plywood fit together with tongue-and-groove notches and painted black. The result a grid of cubbyholes filled with art books and collectibles, like a polka dot paperweight by Japanese artist Yayoi Kusama. The books are laid flat, allowing light to flow through the structure. "The idea was to create a space without using walls," said the younger Mr. Lim, who designed the piece with Mr. Kim and Eddy Man Kim, their third partner who is planning to move to Hong Kong soon.

Within the structure is about 290 square feet of den-like space holding a sofa, small rugs and stacks of DVDs and books. Further into this space, wide, bleached-wood steps lead to a flat platform level that can be topped with cushions and used as beds.

If they are working late into the night, the young architects might toss a tatami mat or thick piece of foam on top of the structure and crash. There is another snoozing spot on the outside edge of the structure, and the men recently placed a thick piece of plywood in a top corner, giving the option of making a loft bed there too.

"When you wake up, it feels like you are on the sea," said Zhang Wei, a Guangzhou-based curator who was an overnight guest on a recent trip. She and her husband piled blankets and pillows onto the structure for a bed. "It's like being on an island because the space around is so huge."

On the far other side of the loft, the space turns into an art gallery. There is a sculpture in the shape of a plate folded in half, by mainland Chinese dissident artist Ai Weiwei. An angular, metallic satellite-like mobile by Korean artist Lee Bul floats in the air. A portrait by U.K. artist Julian Opie hangs on one wall next to an oversized Chinese lantern. There is a gray concrete bathroom with rough bits of exposed brick. It has a communal sink, a shower unit and three toilet stalls.

Photographs by Philipp Englehorn for The Wall Street Journal

A mobile by Lee Bul and recliner by William Lim

Technically, lofts like this are zoned for commercial use. But real estate agents say more entrepreneurs, including artists, retailers and design companies, are combining work and living spaces into them. There is actually a loophole regulation that permits warehouse spaces to have one or two watch guards who may stay overnight. Nothing forbids them from dozing off, said the elder Mr. Lim.

Recently, the government said it can't regularly inspect all warehouses and will only act to enforce zoning regulations if there are complaints. Currently, a 6,700-square-foot warehouse loft in the same area, which comes renovated and with a rooftop terrace, is listed for $5.1 million.

The elder Mr. Lim sits on the board of the Asia Art Archive, which documents the history of contemporary art in Asia, and he is co-chair of Para/Site, a non-profit art space in Hong Kong. When he hosts presentations at the loft, attendees gather on wooden bleacher-like seating that spills off one side of the structure. This week, to coincide with the Hong Kong International Art Fair, he will preside over an open house at the loft to exhibit his art collection.

Right now, the young architects are keeping busy with their new design firm, called openUU. They are working on a penthouse, an art gallery and a private school cafeteria in Hong Kong. In Shanghai, they are designing a seafood retail shop. The loft will continue to serve the elder Mr. Lim's art interests, but, for now, it's also a home base for the younger architects to start their careers.

Says Mr. Kim: "The idea is to see how many different activities we can pack in here."

A version of this article appeared May 18, 2012, on page D6 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: To Doze, Design in Hong Kong.

By KELLY CROW

Agence France-Presse/Getty Images

Daniel Buren, 'Photo-souvenir: From Three Windows, 5 Colours for 252 Places, Work in Situ'

Hong Kong

"Expansion" is a six-foot-long, multicolored abstract created by Chinese painter Chu Teh-Chun in 2006. The painting's title could also sum up the ambition of Art HK: The Hong Kong International Art Fair, where the work sold Wednesday to a Chinese buyer for around $900,000.

   

 

Kelly Crow on Lunch Break reports from Hong Kong on that city's major contemporary art fair, Art HK, which Art Basel has bought a controlling stake in.

Since its kickoff five years ago, Art HK has grown into Asia's pre-eminent art fair, drawing over 60,000 people a year into a warren of booths that spread across a pair of vast halls in the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre.

European Pressphoto Agency

'I Didn't Notice What I Am Doing,' pictured here, by Sun Yuan and Peng Yu., on view at the fair.

This year, at least 700 galleries applied for the fair's 266 slots, said fair director Magnus Renfrew. Several dealers, like Shanghai's Pearl Lam and Paris's Emmanuel Perrotin, waited until fair week to debut their new gallery outposts in Hong Kong. Luxury brands Veuve Clicquot and Shanghai Tang threw late-night parties to coincide with the event.

All of it dovetails with Hong Kong's long-term plans to become a year-round, art-selling hub to rival London or New York—an aspiration wedded to Asia's wealth boom.

There's still an unpredictable energy to Art HK, as Western galleries—who make up about half the fair's dealers—anxiously try to nail down the shifting tastes and spending habits of newer Asian collectors, who are the real power players here.

The mood has been mostly upbeat. Few booths are sold out entirely, but major galleries like Pace are reporting steady sales for works priced under $1 million, thanks mainly to buyers from Asia and Europe. Dealers said at least 300 Australian collectors signed up to attend, happy to have a fair comparatively close to home.

On the other hand, American collectors, who typically flock to major art fairs world-wide, have proven surprisingly scarce. Dealers reasoned that Americans might have gotten their fix at Frieze, a London fair that debuted its own New York edition two weeks ago. Others are also likely saving up for next month's Art Basel, the Swiss contemporary art fair whose owner MCH Group recently bought a majority ownership stake in Art HK. (Next spring, Art HK will be renamed Art Basel Hong Kong.) The fair closes Sunday.

On Wednesday, a reliable group of well-known collectors turned out for the fair's VIP preview, including François Pinault, Christie's owner; Uli Sigg, a former Swiss ambassador to China; Rudy Tseng, a former Walt Disney executive from Taiwan and Richard Chang, the Beijing director of investment firm Tira Holdings.

The galleries also worked to make first-timers feel comfortable. London's Annely Juda Gallery taped up a sign in Mandarin offering to divulge prices for its offerings—something dealers usually just whisper to prospective buyers on a case-by-case basis. Dealer David Juda also placed a small sticker shaped like a red dot beside David Hockney's $950,000 painting of a log, "Felled Totem, September 8th, 2009," to indicate that the work in that booth had already found a buyer. Mr. Juda doesn't apply stickers at other fairs, but he said, "I heard it was a good idea here to reassure people when works are sold."

Plenty of galleries dangled new works by Asian artists in their rosters. In one of the most elaborate displays, the Gagosian Gallery added a carpeted side room to its booth to showcase a pair of new pencil drawings of trees by Zeng Fanzhi, a Chinese painter who is better known for his colorful portraits of men wearing white masks. The gallery used the other walls of this antechamber to offer up paintings by Pablo Picasso, Alberto Giacometti and Claude Monet. The lofty comparison may have helped: Mr. Zeng's drawings sold on the first day for an undisclosed sum.

London dealer Stephane Custot, who sold the Chu Teh-Chun abstract, also brought a $2.2 million Picasso musketeer painting, 1969's "Bust of a Man." But so far, he said passersby had gravitated to their hometown favorite: "It's easier here to sell a Chu Teh-Chun than a Picasso."

Mr. Tseng, the Taiwanese collector, said he thinks the ongoing strength of this fair will lie in artistic mix of East and West. This time, he said he liked German painter Gerhard Richter's wall-size print "Stripe" at Marian Goodman's booth. He also raved about Beijing art duo Sun Yuan and Peng Yu's life-size sculptures of dinosaurs and rhinoceroses, which stood, like a scattered herd, in several fair booths. "See? Everything about this fair is getting bigger," he added.

Write to Kelly Crow at kelly.crow@wsj.com

A version of this article appeared May 18, 2012, on page D4 in the U.S. edition of The Wall Street Journal, with the headline: The Next Global Art Powerhouse.