Chief Executive Carrie Lam

It really gives me great pleasure to come to Art Basel 2018.

I'm no stranger to Art Basel. It is four years ago at the second edition of Art Basel I was standing here to witness the opening of this world's premier contemporary art fair in my then capacity as the Chief Secretary.

I still remember, on that particular occasion four years ago, I said Art Basel will certainly become a very significant event in Hong Kong's cultural landscape, and it turns out to be even better than I could have imagined.

In the last four or five years, Art Basel has really helped us to build Hong Kong into a cultural hub, bringing a lot of world-class arts exhibitions and galleries, and what is most exciting is audience building.

Last year, I saw queues of people, members of the community, queuing up to come into Art Basel to have this feeling of arts appreciation.

This closer relationship between Hong Kong and Basel is something that I find very gratifying.

These days, whenever I go out to promote Hong Kong, I usually end my speech with a tagline, and that is "The best of Hong Kong is yet to come".

It certainly is true for the arts and culture scene in Hong Kong, because we are now seeing our West Kowloon Cultural District starting to have its physical presence and in due course Hong Kong will bring in two wonderful museums.

One is the contemporary art M+, 66,000 sq m. The other is a latecomer - it's the 30,000 sq m Hong Kong Palace Museum. And we're also expanding the Hong Kong arts museum by almost 40% in a couple of years' time.

So the future looks extremely promising for arts and cultural development in Hong Kong, and I welcome more arts people to come to enjoy and share our excitement.

Chief Executive Carrie Lam gave these remarks at the Art Basel Hong Kong opening ceremony on March 27.