Yes, Hong Kong! A city that means many things to many people. For some, it’s where you go to make your fortune; for others, it’s the food capital of the world; and for many, the city is a gateway to mainland China and wider Asia.
What you might not expect, however, is a destination with a burgeoning art and culture scene. Most recently, the annual Art Basel Hong Kong fair welcomed a record 91,500 visitors – its largest attendance to date. What’s more, the city’s upcoming Five-Year Plan formally enshrines this creative evolution, laying the groundwork to deepen cultural dialogue between the city and global artistic communities.
Art Basel Hong Kong 2026
Historically, Hong Kong’s art scene can be tied directly to political volatility and geopolitical displacement; to understand today’s creative explosion, you need to look at that history. The historical foundation of the Hong Kong Museum of Art rests on 19th-century ‘China Trade art’ and pictorial records donated by early local collectors like Sir Paul Chater. Long before the city was a global metropolis, workshop blocks in Canton and the Pearl River Delta operated as cross-cultural meeting points. Here, Cantonese painters like Lam Qua fused classical Chinese techniques with European realism to document port life for foreign buyers. Neither wholly Eastern nor entirely Western, this established Hong Kong’s centuries-old legacy as a space for cultural mutation.
Cultural writers like Gérard Henry have noted that during the high anxiety decades leading up to the 1997 Handover of Hong Kong, the city’s art was entirely grassroots. With virtually no commercial market infrastructure, local artists used raw visual culture to construct a collective memory, desperately anchoring their identity before the dawn of a new era.
While that early guerrilla output was an act of internal preservation, today’s landscape represents a radical global re-centering. As Doryun Chong, artistic director of M+ points out, Hong Kong has long been an epicentre of cultural innovation – arguing that the global dominance of modern South Korean pop culture wouldn’t be possible without the cosmopolitan hybridity pioneered by Hong Kong cinema and music in the 80s and 90s.
Visual artist and animation director, Kongkee. Courtesy of Art Basel.
Today, Chong views the city as a ‘super-connector’ uniquely positioned to challenge and ‘infect’ established Western art histories by championing collisions, mutations and dialogues from across Asia.
Now, in true Hong Kong style, the art scene has entered a definitive new wave. Between the global scale of Art Basel, institutional giants like the M+ Museum and the fresh independent spaces popping up in Wong Chuk Hang – plus news of a landmark portrait gallery coming in 2027 (more here) – the city is stamping its mark on the global cultural map. As Dr Maria Mok, museum director at Hong Kong Museum of Art articulates, “we as a city have become better in collecting, in taste, in creativity. This attention in art and culture is unprecedented.”
And so, if art is life and life is art, as it appears to be in Hong Kong, this is our curated guide to the very best art galleries, heritage complexes and hotel art collections in Hong Kong.
GOLD
CERTAINLY at GOLD. Image Credit Serakai-Studio
In the industrial grid of Wong Chuk Hang, creative collective Serakai Studio is rewriting the rules of the traditional gallery ecosystem with their inaugural concept space, GOLD. Housed in an industrial, high ceilinged unit within the Remex Centre, the space operates as a contemporary cultural salon – deliberately channeling the community-driven, boundary-pushing spirit of early 20th-century Parisian gatherings. The name itself is a deliberate nod to the site’s past incarnations as a jewellery shop and a bank, a choice Tobias Berger, co-founder and curatorial director of Serakai Studio, describes as “a way of honouring the site’s past while completely reimagining its future.” Stripping away conventional art-world formats to let disciplines mix and collide, GOLD functions as a hybrid experimental laboratory bridging contemporary craft, digital aesthetics and youth subcultures. “We are testing new models of operation and experimenting across art, design, music, fashion, performance, technology,” explains Tobias. “In this space one thing is certain…we don’t know the exact outcome.”
Current Plans
Three floors above Gold, alternative art space Current Plans is worth checking out. Displaying around six exhibitions annually, plus weekly events, the gallery space is the lovechild of founder and curator Eunice Tsang and designer Mario Bobbio. The shared vision is to create a universe where diverse forms of creativity collide in unexpected ways. From dancing parties, to experimental gigs, art residencies and cooking sessions, expect playful interaction and spirited fun.
Para Site
Installation view of ‘Site-seeing’
Founded in 1996 as an artist-run space, Para Site is one of Asia’s most established independent, non-profit art spaces. The collective drives critical dialogues in art and society through exhibitions, publications and educational programmes, nurturing up-and-coming artists and curators.
PMQ
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Tucked into the frantic energy of Soho, PMQ (Police Married Quarters) acts as a tapestry for Hong Kong’s grassroots creative scene. The former colonial-era residential quarters underwent a radical evolution in 2014, emerging as a multi-story landmark dedicated to indie design and new-age craft. Inside, the architecture houses over 100 hyper-local boutiques, studios and dining concepts. Head to the fourth floor to rummage through Glocal Mahjong’s artisanal game sets, step into Obellery for intricate jewellery and track down Twemco Industries, makers of the cult-classic flip clocks featured in classic Wong Kar-wai films.
Hong Kong Museum of Art
To trace the lineage of Hong Kong’s creative output, look to the water’s edge in Tsim Sha Tsui. Established in 1962, the Hong Kong Museum of Art (HKMoA) shed its blocky exterior in 2019 for a trendy redesign wrapped in wave-like masonry panels that mirror Victoria Harbour. Today, it operates as a fluid urban space, drawing over a million visitors a year. “When people come here they feel that Hong Kong Museum of Art is the art museum of Hong Kong – a place where they can see Hong Kong’s cultural lineage and art legacy,” says museum director Dr. Maria Mok. Inside, imperial antiquities and historic China trade paintings dominate the space beside rotating contemporary works – a curation that scales globally this year with HKMoA helming Hong Kong’s pavilion at the Venice Biennale. Yet the institution’s real magic lies in how it frames its geography. The sea-facing lobbies offer floor-to-ceiling views across the water, a deliberate design choice that Dr. Mok notes “creates a sense of belonging,” where the city’s famous harbour view is synchronised with the art itself.
M+ Museum
M+ against the Hong Kong skyline
Approaching its fifth anniversary, M+ has rapidly evolved to become Asia’s global museum of contemporary visual culture. Spend an afternoon here moving between installations such as Dial-A-Poem Hong Kong, where you pick up a vintage telephone and listen to spoken word, to the wonderfully transfixing seeing sound, hearing time, celebrating the legacy of composer and artist Ryuichi Sakamoto (yes, it’s audiophile heaven). An ongoing exhibition, and definitely not one to miss, is M+ Sigg Collection: Inner Worlds – a thirty-eight-artist-strong journey through human emotion and expression. “From the outset, M+ has upheld the mission of connecting Hong Kong visual culture with global visual culture and bringing the city’s culture to the world,” says Doryun Chong, artistic director and chief curator. This cross-border dialogue scales globally through major upcoming blockbusters like the Lee Bul: From 1998 to Now survey, yet the programming remains intensely rooted in the specific viewpoint of its home region. Rather than mimicking Western art-world formats, M+ champions a de-centred, distinct perspective built on regional identity. As Chong observes, “Adoption, adaptation, mutation, and hybridity have been key characteristics of cultural production in our region.”
Tai Kwun
Better Together at Tai Kwun, Hong Kong
Tai Kwun stands as one of Hong Kong’s boldest cultural revivifications – a vast, walled compound in Central. Consisting of the former Central Police Station, Central Magistracy and Victoria Prison, the sixteen legacy buildings underwent a decade-long restoration, emerging as a fresh canvas for contemporary art, performance and education. The genius of the space lies in its duality. In the Parade Ground, heritage architecture plays host to open-air performances, while the sleek structures designed by Herzog & de Meuron anchor the site’s cutting-edge art exhibitions. Make your way through the site’s heritage exhibition, which houses preserved jail cells and explores complex histories of migration and displacement, before resting your legs beneath the courtyard’s leafy mango tree. For a deeper look at the community, the “We All Belong” programme offers multiethnic, fresh, creative perspectives on the city’s shared living heritage.
The Chao Lee Art Foundation
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Hong Kong will always leave you wanting more – and it rarely disappoints. Murmurs have been growing around an incoming cultural landmark: the debut of The Chao Lee Art Foundation’s A Hong Kong Portrait Collection. Recognising that the city’s identity has been fundamentally sculpted by the remarkable individuals who have navigated its creative and social landscapes, this project captures history directly through the faces and narratives of the people who built it. Spanning from unsung local heroes to prominent global figures, the collection will explore what it means to belong and to leave a legacy in the territory. Commissioned by founder Jane Chao Lee, the ambitious initiative will culminate in a major exhibition in 2027 – making it one of the most anticipated moments on the city’s upcoming cultural calendar. Watch this space…
Island Shangri-La, Hong Kong
Hong Kong is hardly short on acclaimed hotels. But art aficionados, listen up! Dominating a coveted address in Central, Island Shangri-La functions as an art gallery in its own right, housing over 900 curated pieces across its shared spaces and elegant guest rooms. Guests here are privy to an extraordinary display of craftsmanship: intricate chalk and ink drawings share space with classic Chinese oil paintings and four 17th-century Old Master drawings by Claude Lorrain. On the 39th floor, the Library showcases watercolours by the celebrated Romanticist J.M.W. Turner, including Music Party and The Visit to the Tomb. Yet the hotel’s true crowning jewel is The Great Motherland of China – a monumental silk mural that scales the central atrium. Stepping into the glass elevator on level 41, you’ll glide upwards alongside a 250-panel landscape, meticulously crafted over six months by 20 master artists from the Beijing Arts and Crafts Research Institute. It is a moving, sweeping vista that spans the Great Wall of China, the rushing waters of Huangguoshu Waterfall, and the mist-shrouded peaks of Sichuan and Taishan.
For those travelling with children, the hotel offers a playful twist on the traditional family stay. An entire floor is dedicated to immersive family rooms and suites designed to spark younger imaginations (and, candidly, your own). From the sky-high whimsy of Airship Voyage to the maritime heritage of Fisherman’s Cove, each space has been hand-painted by a collective of local artists. Hidden motifs and local wildlife are scattered across the walls, waiting to be discovered under the beam of a special UV torch. Our top pick is the Hong Kong Wonders Suite. Here, the bunk beds mimic the city’s classic double-decker trams, known affectionately as the ding-ding, while a vibrant mural by local artist Don Mak brilliantly captures the duality of Hong Kong, juxtaposing its neon-lit streets with its tranquil, rural landscapes.
Lead image: HKMoA
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