2013 art recommendations(5)

Fine arts

There will also be plenty to see on the fine arts scene this year.

Earth, Sea, and Sky presents 130 works of art from the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which have been rendered as paintings, tapestries, ceramics, bronze and silver ware. They are on loan from 12 of the Met's 17 curatorial departments.

The exhibits are categorized into seven sections: Nature Idealized, The Human Presence in Nature, Animals, Flowers and Gardens, Nature in the Camera Lens, Earth and Sky, and Watery World.

Highlight paintings include Rembrandt's Flora, in which the Dutch master used his deceased wife as his model to depict the goddess of spring, flowers and love; Renoir's Figures on the Beach that portrays the sparkling sea and two women; and Van Gogh's Cypresses, a painting of a tree in Provence that the artist considered to be "as beautiful of line and proportion as an Egyptian obelisk".

The Yuz Museum Shanghai will open to the public in June, in Xuhui district, Shanghai. The private establishment will join the new venue of Long Museum on the west bank of Huangpu River, as part of the W-Bank Cultural Corridor.

The founder of the museum, Budi Tek, is a Chinese-Indonesian entrepreneur, art philanthropist and collector. The Yuz Museum Jakarta, which opened in 2008, is the first private museum in Indonesia.

The Yuz Museum Shanghai is under construction, and designed by Japanese architect Sou Fujimoto.

Also, China's largest private museum, Minsheng Museum of Modern Art, will expand its presence from Shanghai to open a new space in Beijing. The new venue in Dashanzi will open to the public in the latter half of 2013, featuring an exhibition space of 35,000 square meters.

Minsheng Museum was founded by the namesake bank and is dedicated to the research, collection and support of Chinese art.

Meanwhile, the largest exhibition tour of American artist Andy Warhol in China will take place in Shanghai on April 14 and will continue to the end of July.

The show, entitled Andy Warhol: 15 Minutes Eternal, will feature more than 260 paintings, drawings, sculptures, films and videos of the artist's works, including his most acclaimed masterpieces, such as Jackie (1964), Marilyn Monroe (1967), Campbell's Soup (1961), and numerous iconic self-portraits.

The exhibition will chronicle the breadth of Warhol's career and demonstrate the full scope of his interests. A wide range of associated documents, interactive timelines, photographs and archival material will be presented. Part of the exhibition space will be recreated into Warhol's legendary studio, The Factory.

Sotheby's upcoming spring sales in Hong Kong will offer 35 works of contemporary Japanese artist Yoshitomo Nara, from a bank official's private collection.

Shun Kurokochi amassed his Nara works between 1988 and 2006. He supported the artist long before he became famous, and the collection is testimony to a unique personal connection between the pair for over a decade.

Another featured sale will offer 46 contemporary Chinese paintings from the 1990s consigned by French collector Didier Hirsch. Works by such star artists as Yue Minjun, Zhou Chunya and Liu Wei capture Chinese people's contradictions during the process of commercialization.

Art Basel's first edition in Hong Kong attracts a prestigious line-up of galleries from 35 countries and regions, and will showcase artworks by more than 3,000 artists, from modern masters of the early 20th century to work from rising stars.

The fair's main sector, Galleries, enables visitors to explore both historical and contemporary art from different regions, cultures and aesthetic traditions. The Insights section is devoted to the ideas and aesthetics of the Asia-Pacific region, through a mix of solo and group exhibitions.

The world's premier art fair spotlights the latest trends in the visual arts. It now has three sites: Basel, Miami and Hong Kong, with each host city producing unique programming, in collaboration with local institutions. Its expansion to Hong Kong reaffirms the city's status as a vital global art hub. It will be held from May 23-26 at Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre.