Meet the Collector: Why Evan Chow Doesn’t Believe in the Coup de Foudre
In many ways, Evan Chow is representative of a new generation of Asian collectors reimagining what dynastic art collecting looks like in the 21st Century. A managing partner of MCL Financial Group and a descendant of the Lee family that founded the Bank of East Asia, he established and runs the family office, CEG Capital, alongside his wider financial interests. He is the first Hong Kong-based trustee appointed to the Board at the New Museum in New York, a member of the Cercle International of the Pompidou and a founding patron of M+ Museum—an institutional footprint that reflects a collector who has long understood that patronage and acquisition are two sides of the same coin. His growing collection of over 500 works is both international in breadth and focused in scope, with particular attention paid to geometric abstraction and emerging and mid-career artists from Hong Kong. In 2023, he founded the Evan Chow Art Prize at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, supporting a range of works across undergraduate and postgraduate exhibitions.
The institutional weight of Chow’s collecting life is, in many ways, a product of his disbelief in the coup de foudre—the sudden epiphany that inspires or shapes a collection. His collecting journey did not begin with some decisive first purchase; it evolved as he lived with artworks. They “begin to shape the way you see,” Chow tells Observer. His first purchase was a print from Zhang Xiaogang’s seminal Bloodline series, acquired after spending time at ArtHK, the art fair that later became Art Basel Hong Kong. “I remember the experience more than the acquisition itself. It marked a growing curiosity rather than a defining moment.”
What drew him in was a desire to understand how certain works maintain structure and clarity. “I was interested in how an artwork could change the way a room feels, not by dominating it, but by bringing a sense of proportion and balance into it,” he reflects. Even after years and so much art encountered in between, that hasn’t really changed. “The works I live with continue to refine that way of looking over time, rather than marking any fixed starting point.”
When asked whether he sees his collection as a narrative, a constellation or something more open-ended, he is quick to opt for the latter. “It doesn’t come together as a fixed arrangement, as on a shelf. The relationships form more gradually, often through how works sit with one another over time,” he explains. What matters more to him is how works relate in space and over time. “The connections are often not linear. They reveal themselves through proximity, through contrast, or sometimes through a shared sense of structure that only becomes apparent after living with them for a while.”
If there is a thread running through the collection, it is less about subject matter than about a way of thinking. “I find myself drawn to works that hold a certain clarity and internal logic, where decisions feel deliberate and resolved,” Chow emphasizes. “That tends to create a kind of quiet coherence across the collection, even when the works come from very different contexts.”
When asked whether he has any favorites, he admits he has a few works he returns to often, but a charcoal work by Lee Bae is one of his most beloved. “What stays with me is the way he works with the material,” he says. Charcoal begins as something fragile and impermanent, but in Bae’s work, through a deliberate and disciplined process, it is built into something structured and enduring. Each surface is developed patiently, and every mark feels considered.
“There is a certain clarity in that approach,” he adds, identifying in Bae’s practice a way of working where restraint and persistence are central and where meaning is not immediate but formed gradually over time. “I find that shifts how I think about strength. Not as something forceful, but as something that comes through consistency and care.” A truly powerful work of art, to Chow, does not reveal itself all at once.
Collecting often has an evolving trajectory, as cultural references, sensitivities and tastes shift with time. When asked how his aesthetic and collecting philosophy have changed over the years, Chow says his underlying approach has remained consistent, but “the threshold has become clearer.” He has afforded himself greater openness in recent years. “Now I find myself drawn more consistently to works that hold their own structure, where the logic is internal and doesn’t rely on context to sustain interest.”
“Spending time with different works, spaces and conversations gradually sharpens your sense of what continues to hold, and what falls away.” It becomes, he says, a quieter process of narrowing rather than selecting—one where the relationships between artworks feel more resolved without needing to be explicitly defined. “Much of it comes from time spent with exhibitions and institutions, and from an openness to letting those encounters extend beyond the moment.”
Chow grew up around his family’s collection of Chinese art and antiques: his great-grandparents, grandparents and parents were all collectors of ink art and ceramics, which gave him an early sense of what it means to live with art, even if his own path would eventually move in a different direction. His choice to collect contemporary art wasn’t a rebellion, however. He was simply searching for the art that would resonate with him and future generations. “That came through looking, asking questions, and gradually finding a way of engaging that felt natural to me,” he explains.
His thoughtfulness, seriousness and curiosity have made him one of the most respected collectors of his generation. “Conversations with artists, curators and others in the field have been part of that process, but not in a way that felt prescriptive,” he considers. “It was more about exposure over time, and allowing that to shape how I approach collecting.” Chow tends to engage first with ideas, even before the object and the story. The artists, the works and the galleries that support them all play a role, “but what stays with me is the way of thinking the work holds.”
Chow has now spent years living and traveling between Hong Kong, the U.S. and other cities, increasingly aware of how each place shapes the way one sees—something that struck him particularly after a recent visit to New York for the New Museum’s reopening. “Each place carries its own rhythm, in how space is experienced, how attention is directed, and how things are valued. After a while, it stops feeling like moving between fixed positions, and becomes more about noticing what shifts and what continues to hold.”
The idea of a “bridge”—which fits both his personal and collecting interests—isn’t something he thinks about directly. It tends to form on its own. “Hong Kong already exists within that condition, so it feels less like something to construct and more like something to recognize.”
Chow’s background in private investing has partially shaped his approach to collecting, he acknowledges, but mostly in terms of discipline, time and long-term thinking rather than in a strictly financial sense. “In both contexts, there is an emphasis on structure, on understanding how different elements relate, and on taking a longer-term view,” he explains. “That way of thinking carries into collecting, in terms of being considered in how I build and pace the collection, but the criteria remain quite different.” He does not see the collection as an investment in the conventional sense. “There is a level of discipline in how I think about committing to a work, but what matters more is whether it can sustain its presence and continue to hold meaning as you live with it.” It is analytical in some ways, he acknowledges, but not driven by optimization. “It’s more about clarity, and sensing what continues to resonate over time.”
Chow has also been collecting design pieces alongside art and does not tend to draw a strict line between the two: “What intrigues me is still the same: how something is made, and how it holds its structure in space. That’s often what I’m drawn to, and what I return to over time.”
Looking ahead, Chow avoids predefined plans for the next phase of the collection. “If anything, the focus remains on being more considered in what I choose to live with—paying closer attention to what holds, while allowing the collection to evolve in a way that feels natural rather than directed.” At the same time, he has been thinking more about how art is encountered beyond the collection itself and how those encounters can be shared more widely in meaningful ways. “That has led me to begin establishing a foundation alongside the collection, with an initial focus on supporting emerging artists and strengthening connections between Hong Kong and the international art community,” he explains. In parallel, he has been thinking about how the collection can gradually assume a more institutional role. “Both are still evolving, but they feel like a natural extension of how I’ve been approaching collecting so far.”