Sotheby's Hong Kong achieved a white-glove sale of 125 works from Japan's Okada Museum of Art, totaling $88 million and setting auction records for Japanese artists Kitagawa Utamaro and Hokusai. The sale was driven by museum founder Kazuo Okada's need to settle a $50 million legal dispute with casino magnate Steve Wynn. Meanwhile, Canada's minority Liberal government passed a budget that includes a commitment to introduce artist resale rights, granting artists royalties when their work is resold through auction houses or galleries, a policy long advocated by arts nonprofits and cultural leaders.
The Okada Museum sale underscores the enduring strength of the Asian art market, with iconic works like Hokusai's *The Great Wave Off the Coast of Kanagawa* nearly tripling its estimate, and highlights how major collections can be liquidated to resolve legal and financial pressures. Canada's resale rights measure, if enacted, would align the country with over 90 nations already mandating such royalties, offering long-overdue financial recognition to visual artists—particularly Indigenous artists—and potentially reshaping the secondary market for Canadian art.