An overview of some of the most important Chinese art collectors and if applicable their Instagram accounts.
Whether you are interested in any kind of collecting art or just curious about Chinese contemporary art it is always helpful to watch the Chinese art collectors that already doing this (mostly) successful. You can see what they are collecting or which events or Galleries they frequently visit.
Please see the following list as a short introduction to some of the most important Chinese art collectors. The list is not complete ( I will make adjustments from time to time) and only focus on Mainland China, not Hongkong and Taiwan. Also please note that there are other collectors who want to stay rather in the shadows and therefore have not a lot of pressure coverage or own webpages.
I tried to give links to Instagram or other related webpages (see hyperlinks behind their names) so you can check or follow the Chinese art collectors yourself but I appreciate if you sent me more names and links to their social profiles in the comments and I will integrate them to keep this article up to date.
1. Chinese art collectors Wanwan Lei & Lin Han
“We have been looking to the past a lot. But only because we see this as a tool to better understand the future.”
Famous Chinese art collectors and power-couple Lin and Lei cofounded Beijing’s private contemporary art museum M WOODS with Huang in 2014. “While Lin made his first purchase in 2013, “Wanwan has been around art and artists her whole life”. She began her first of many gallery jobs at age 17 while earning her undergraduate art history degree at Beijing’s Central Academy of Fine Art. She also modelled for Chinese painter Liu Ye during this time.
Lin’s first purchase was a mask painting by contemporary Chinese artist Zeng Fanzhi. But recently, the couple have begun exploring cross-period commonalities.
2. Qiao Zhibing
I needed to decorate the blank walls in my clubs, so I started buying art.
Beijing-born Qiao Zhibing made his fortune in the entertainment industry. He started his career in the 1980s, working as a sound engineer and later opening his own nightclub in Hainan, followed by two more in Beijing and Shanghai. He began collecting Chinese contemporary art in 2006 and is attracted to works that relate to his personal experiences, he says. Most expensive acquired work was around 1 million pound.
Qiao’s collection—much of which is now on show at his four-storey karaoke club Shanghai Night—will soon get a dedicated space, to be called Tank Shanghai at West Bund cultural corridor on the banks of Shanghai’s Huangpu river. The project, designed by Open Architecture, is scheduled to open in march 2019.
3. Chong Zhou
“I like to show art in a public space, a living space—not just a white cube.”
Chong Zhou is one of the younger Chinese art collectors and hosts regular exhibitions, talks, and social gatherings at Mingo, his restaurant housed inside a turn-of-the-century villa in Shanghai’s former French concession, as part of his initiative Art Project CZ. Chong credits his interest in collecting art with his mother, who started her own collection in 2001.
However, it was not until 2010 that he made his first purchase—a self-portrait by Yayoi Kusama. Today, his collection centers on artists of his own generation (those born after 1975) with rising stars Liang Manqi and Chongqing-born painter Xie Nanxing currently on his radar.
4. Chinese art collectors Wang Wei & Liu Yiqian
Chinese megacollectors and founders of the Long Museum, Wang Wei and Liu Yiqian have previously shocked the artworld by dropping serious money on a Modigliani, sipping from a Ming Dynasty teacup (paid for with an Amex card) and posing in front of an 11m-long Gerhard Richter artwork (later confirmed as an acquisition).
Wang, who is also the director of Long Museum and has proclaimed her commitment to promoting cultural exchange between China and the West. She programmed a roster of blockbuster exhibitions at the Long Museum’s Pudong, West Bund and Chongqing sites in 2018, including James Turrell’s first retrospective in China and a major presentation of Antony Gormley’s art.
5. Chinese art collectors Lu Jun & Lu Xun
Chinese art collectors Lu Xun and his father Lu Jun are a really collectors family. Thirty-three-year-old Lu Xun is the young Chinese collector behind Sifang Art Museum, a spectacular Steven Holl -designed space set inside Laoshan National Forest Park that he opened with his father, real estate developer Lu Jun, in 2013—having left postgraduate studies at Cambridge four years prior to help run the project.
Lu has not only inherited his family’s passion for collecting Chinese contemporary art, but he has also brought an international ethos to the site by way of a specific interest in working with globally renowned architects and artists for site-specific projects. The museum’s campus boasts 20 villas designed by some 20 international architects—including David Adjaye and Ai Weiwei.
6. Lawrence Chu
Collector Lawence Chu, who is managing partner of BlackPine Zheng He Capital Management and patron of the Ullens Center for Contemporary Art, first entered the art world while a student at the University of Chicago.
He has a diverse and ever-evolving collection of both emerging and established artists, ranging from performance pieces by Josh Kline, Danh Võ, and Alicja Kwade to abstract expressionist paintings from Kenzo Okada, Mark Bradford, T’ang Haywen and Lui Shou Kwan.
7. Zhou Tong
It wasn’t until I noticed that my house couldn’t fit any more artworks and wondered whether I was maybe buying “too much”. At that point, I realised that I could call myself a collector.
Collecting Asian contemporary greats since 1996, such as Chinese artist Liu Ye with his iconic inspired Mondrian paintings and Miffy bunnies, Zhou Tong first explored New Literati paintings in the 1990s. Overtime, he gradually shifted his attention to contemporary art focusing primarily on abstract art. Over the years, the contemporary art lover admitted to reaching full wall capacity in his home.
Based in Beijing, Zhou Tong is a curator and columnist for Chinese art magazine SCOPE, writing art reviews and critics.
8. Wang Zhongjun
Chinese art collector Wang Zhongjun’s entertainment company is one of the largest in China, and his collection includes works by Chinese artists as well as Picasso, van Gogh, Renoir, and Pissarro, among others from the West. Wang also does a fair bit of painting himself, citing van Gogh as having a particular impact on his own work.
In 2015, at Sotheby’s, he paid $29.9 million for Picasso’s Femme au chignon dans un fauteuil (1948), which had been in the collection of film producer Samuel Goldwyn Jr.
9. Huang Yu
“Whenever I’m considering a piece of work or an artist, I look at what strength they bring to their respective category.”
The former champion bodybuilder and Sichuan-born Huang sees his collection as having five main pillars: painting, contemporary ink, video and photography, sculpture, and, a particular favourite, conceptual work. A personal highlight of his collection is Zheng Guogu’s set of metallic sculptures resembling soap dispensers and soda cans, Rusty for Another 2000 Years (1999-2008). Huang recently presented his collection at MOCA Chengdu, an experience that he saw as a homecoming of sorts: “I am from Sichuan, and wanted to bring the positive energy of contemporary art to my home province.”
10. Zheng Hao
The renowned art collector and entrepreneur Zheng Hao is also the mastermind behind the HOW Art Museum. Started collecting at the age of 7, Zheng’s massive collection of 3,000 pieces comprises contemporary art, Western antique silver and Chinese cloisonné objects.
Zheng’s 2,000-strong collection includes works by Damien Hirst, Anish Kapoor, Yayoi Kusama, Xu Bing, Lin Tianmiao and Ai Weiwei.
11. Ma Weidu
Among the Chinese art collectors Ma is one of the most known throughout China. He is founder and curator of Guanfu Museum, the first private museum in China. His representative books like Zui Wenming make him among the best sellers of Chinese writers. Ma makes efforts to public education – he is a visiting professor of Shanghai Jiaotong University and the guest speaker of TY program Lecture Room.
12. Li Huina
Li was inspired to collect by her antique-collecting father. After majoring in painting at Shanghai University’s Fine Arts College in 2007, she began considering a collection of her own, picking up a work by Xu Bing in 2011. From there, her collection has focused exclusively on Chinese artists, continuing to expand in volume, dimensions, and media. Li is particularly drawn to contemporary artists such as Cai Guo-Qiang, Zhang Enli, and Sun Xun, whose work incorporates both a palpable Chinese lexicon and international perspective. By the end of this year, the young Chinese collector will open an art space in Shanghai’s M50 art hub to showcase her collection, as well as provide a venue for talks, education, and performance art.
13. Luo Yi
“It’s important to keep reading and keep looking,” says Yi of her approach to collecting. A first purchase of a Martin Kippenberger painting (“he represented everything I admire in an artist”) kickstarted a collection of mid-career and young artists from the U.S., South Africa, France, Switzerland, U.K., Turkey, and beyond.
Earlier this year, Yi co-founded YIS Foundation, a research organization aimed at fostering best practices and professional development in the Chinese art ecosystem. “The past two decades saw a dramatic growth of the contemporary art market in China; however, systematic research and regulatory initiatives fall short in relation to the market boom,” she says. “At the foundation, we endeavour to alter this status quo.” The inaugural project, YIS LIST, rates young contemporary Chinese artists based on international exhibition records.
14. Zhang Chang
It was a Francis Bacon painting at London’s Tate Modern that first inspired young Beijing-based collector Zhang to begin acquiring works. His first purchase was in 2013, and today his collection comprises pieces by the likes of Rudolf Stingel, Urs Fischer, Gerhard Richter, and Takashi Murakami.
In addition to his work in real estate development and medical investment, the Suzhou native is currently exploring possibilities for opening an art space next year in Beijing’s Chaoyang district.
15. Chinese art collector Yu Mingfang
Businessman mogul, worth US$910 million, owns Chinese shoe producer Belle International Holdings. Yu reportedly loves contemporary artists like Damien Hirst, Raoul Dufy and Luc Tuymans, and Chinese artists like Yi Zheng and Wei Liu. He is friends with Beijing-based artist Zeng Fanzhi, and owns at least 10 of Zeng’s paintings.