Learning about art and luxury
By Nadya Wang

Sara Mao in her role as an auctioneer. Image courtesy of Christie’s Images Ltd. 2023.

Christie’s Education in Asia Pacific offers a wide range of programmes to introduce the crucial context of the art and luxury worlds. They include immersive courses, such as “All about the Auction Business”, where participants can follow specialists from Christie's to learn about a variety of collecting categories and different roles within the auction industry. There is also an “Art in Focus” series with content-rich courses such as “Female Artists through the Centuries” and “Chinese Ceramics, Paintings and Works of Art”, as well as special city-based art tours.

In this conversation, we hear from Sara Mao, who is Director of Christie’s Education Asia Pacific, as well as Vice President and Auctioneer at Christie’s in the region. Sara talks about the unique offerings she has developed with her team, the first Art & Sustainability Forum held in November, as well as her vision for the future of Christie’s Education.

Handbags handling session. Image courtesy of Christie’s Images Ltd. 2023.

Broadly, could you speak about what Christie’s Education offers in the Asia Pacific?

Christie's Education Asia Pacific, is fairly new compared to the other locations in London and New York. What we offer is a two-tiered format of education - public and private bespoke programmes, for we are the only education provider that sits directly under an auction house.

In art, we cover all the categories that we sell at Christie's, sometimes even beyond. In terms of subject matter, we offer art business, the art market, connoisseurship as well as art law. These are aspects that people are interested in as passionate investors, new collectors, or people who want to join the art industry.

On the luxury side, we also cover categories that we handle at Christie's. These include jewellery, wine, watches, and especially in Asia, one very interesting programme features handbags. The majority of the focus on luxury has a little more to do with investing because the primary market is so visible. Aside from learning about investing, participants are also keen to know about authentication, value appreciation and the development of historical changes. That's the public side of what we do at Christie’s Education.

We also create private, bespoke programmes for banks, luxury brands, and individuals who approach us to do so. We try to tailor-make programmes for what they are interested in learning. This portfolio forms about half of the work that we do.

Chinese painting handling session. Image courtesy of Christie’s Images Ltd. 2023.

How does it approximate what Christie’s Education usually offers elsewhere, and what are some of the unique offerings for the Asia Pacific market?

I think the first one has to do with Asian art. We have a partnership with The Robert Chang Art Education Charitable Foundation. Chang is one of the foremost collectors of Chinese art. He has partnered with Christie's Education to sponsor our Asian art programmes. And so we focus primarily on Chinese ceramics and works of art, as well as Chinese paintings.

The partnership enables us to offer a limited number of complimentary spaces to full-time students to take part in programmes. It also gives us a little more room to find and invite interesting lecturers and speakers beyond Hong Kong, in China and across Asia, to be involved.

The Chinese ceramics programme is well-subscribed. The advantage of the programme being held here at Christie's Education is that the participants can handle the work, whereas there is less likely chance of doing so at other institutions. They spend half the time in the classroom learning the information, and half the time outside of it to look at real pieces up close. When we have a handling session, we can talk about the works in front of us, and compare and contrast them to apply and enhance the information learnt.

Sara Mao giving a guided tour. Image courtesy of Christie’s Images Ltd. 2023.

Who are the target audience for Christie’s Education, and from whom do you see increasing enrolment

Because of COVID and the pandemic, many of our participants have not had a chance to come in person to our programmes. Currently, 80% of our sign-ups are coming from China, and from cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Sichuan and Yunnan. They are often entrepreneurs. They are not usually in the art field, but they want to know more about art, either for their enjoyment or from a business development perspective, to consider opening up new possibilities within their current businesses. The attendees are knowledgeable and passionate, and we have many recurring students.

Another key offering from Christie’s Education Asia Pacific is for attendees to understand the art world ecosystem. We have an evergreen program called “One Week in the Art World: Hong Kong”, where we take students around museums, galleries, artist studios, and sometimes, we visit private collectors’ homes as well. We have translated this to other cities, such as Tokyo, London and Seoul, with upcoming tours in Hangzhou and other cities. We try to cover the ecosystem of the city and show what makes each city unique.

The art tours are intensive. For example, if we visit a gallery, we do not only look at the exhibition on display but will usually have a conversation with a gallerist and talk about the art fairs in which they participate in, for example, and the challenges of setting up at an art fair and so on.

Sara Mao speaking at a lecture for Christie’s Education. Image courtesy of Christie’s Images Ltd. 2023.

Could you talk about the team at Christie’s Education and their respective roles, including your own?

I have a wonderful team of four. I plan and curate the whole year through. I have a programme lead, Gao Yi who manages the Mandarin portion of the content.

I am also quite involved and can speak for hours a day at a course, which I am lucky to do. For example, when we talk about the business of Christie's, I do not outsource it but prefer to do the main teaching.

But when we talk about Chinese paintings, ceramics and subjects that are category-focused, then of course, we have a lot of options, and we bring in external speakers and lecturers. We vet them to make sure that they have academic proficiency while being able to speak to our attendees in a way that engages them.

Sara Mao moderating a talk at the Art & Sustainability Forum 2023. Image courtesy of Christie’s Images Ltd. 2023.

Could you talk about moderating the first Art and Sustainability forum? What were your key takeaways from the forum?

Being a part of it was an exciting experience because my understanding of sustainability had been limited to ecological aspects that I think all of us are very familiar with. My first instinct was to engage artists who were concerned with sustainability, but I came to realise the many different pillars of sustainability, and the need to expand the concept of sustainability in a bigger format.

I think we were quite successful in doing so, and in generating a lot of ideas. The invited speakers, such as Veronica Castillo, Deputy Director of Collection and Exhibition M+, and Betty Ng, Founder and Director of COLLECTIVE are all invested in the future of sustainability. It was great to hear from everyone, and how they are contributing in their ways towards a common goal.

What programmes are you developing at the moment?

The wonderful thing about being in this role is that there are so many different aspects that exist within Christie's international stage, and not everything gets featured in Asia or has an audience in the region yet. I have the opportunity and ability to extract something that is happening in a different part of the world and move it into the education platform.

Next year, I hope to focus on Eastern European contemporary artists. So we potentially have an art tour to go to Budapest, if anyone would be interested! And another focus would be African contemporary art. During our time in London, in addition to visiting Frieze, we also went to the 1-54 Contemporary African Art Fair and were inspired by the range of works on display. I see the space and potential to introduce African contemporary art through Christie’s Education Asia Pacific.

“The wonderful thing about being in this role is that there are so many different aspects that exist within Christie’s international stage, and not everything gets featured in Asia or has an audience in the region yet. I have the opportunity and ability to extract something that is happening in a different part of the world and move it into the education platform. ”

Are there plans to expand to Southeast Asia with Christie’s Education?

In Hong Kong, I think it was quite tough for us in the last three years, especially in contrast to Southeast Asia having opened up earlier. Hong Kong is our base, and we do see more attendees preferring to fly in once again to take courses in person rather than continuing to take them online as they had to do during the pandemic.

We want to make sure we have our evergreen courses solid here in Hong Kong, but we are planning to expand and visit more and more cities and have activations in them, including Southeast Asia, particularly in Singapore, Bangkok and Jakarta.

Visit Christie’s Education Hong Kong for more information, and to sign up for its programmes.

This article is published in partnership with Christie’s.