Depending on your location, March is mad for hares or welcoming autumn splendour, and whether you’re in the northern hemi, Down Under or Asia-bound, there’s a bevy of hot-to-trot happenings this month.
Shanghai
Interior design and lifestyle steal the spotlight at China’s leading annual paean to form and function: Design Shanghai (6-9 Mar). More than 300 local and global leading design talents congregate to showcase works that are contemporary, classic and collectible, while this year’s speaker panel includes Tord Boontje, Kelly Hoppen and Naoto Fukasawa. Offshoot of the main event, Design Shanghai in the City sees a clutch of buzzy events around town, including design tours exploring showrooms, museums and architecture. If you’re headed to the Pearl of the Orient late in the month, keep peepers peeled for the opening of Tank Shanghai, the West Bund Cultural Corridor’s newest arts addition.
Hong Kong
It started with juggernaut Art Basel (27-31 Mar) but Hong Kong is now host to a showstopping array of city-wide arty events throughout March. Coined Hong Kong Arts Month, headliners include Basel (snap up a private invitation 27-28 to avoid the hordes) and Art Central (also 27-31 Mar; VIP preview is 26 Mar) repping Asia’s next-gen of cutting-edge talents, and supporting acts include the Asia Contemporary Art Show (29 Mar-1 Apr), Art Gallery Night at the historic Pedder Building and South Island Art Day in gritty, industrial-creative hood Wong Chuk Hang. See our interview with muralist Elsa de Jean De Dieu for local perspective on Hong Kong’s street art.
Melbourne
The Melbourne International Comedy Festival (27 Mar-27 Apr) brings 100+ of the world’s funniest people to town for four weeks of side-splitting stand up, sketches and live theatre performed in venues across the city. Most shows are at night, leaving the days free to graze, caffeinate and shop your way around Australia’s cultural capital.
Paris
Previously held in September Goût de France (21-24 Mar), is a 3-day smorgasboard of events, such as celebrity chef cooking demos, recipe competitions and special lower-priced tasting menus at top restaurants, plus numerous one-off, belt-busting pop ups at cultural centres across Paris. Thighs be damned and off you eat!
New York
The US art world’s movers n’ makers convene for The Art Show (28 Feb -3 Mar), lovingly put together by the Art Dealers Association of America (ADAA). Hot on its heels is the Armory Show (7-10 Mar), another primo art fair bringing together artists and gallery owners, art-lovers and collectors to peruse the world’s most vital C.20th and C.21st works. Founded by a group of 16 galleries dubbed the ‘Asian Art Dealers of the Upper East Side’, Asia Week New York (13-23 Mar) is an NYC-wide collaboration of top-tier Asian art specialists, auction houses, museums, and Asian cultural institutions. Much of the action takes place around Midtown and the UES, with auctions at Sotheby’s, Bonhams or Christie’s, and special talks at The Met.
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