The conflict in the Red Sea is adding delays to art shipping for entities in the Middle East and for clients sending works between Asia and Europe.
“The current issues in the Red Sea are having a significant impact on our art logistics operations in the region,” says Thomas Schneider, the chief executive officer of Hasenkamp, a German art shipper who handles much of the logistics in the Arabian Gulf. “We are therefore increasingly using air freight rather than sea freight to maintain our high standards for the safe and timely delivery of artworks.”
Since November, Houthi rebels based in Yemen have been targeting shipping vessels travelling through the 1,200-mile-long waterway, mostly at the southern end, where the ships pass through a narrow strait between Yemen and Eritrea. A Houthi missile attack killed three seafarers on the Greek-owned, Barbados-flagged ship True Confidence last week.
The Red Sea is the main route for cargo ships sailing from Asia and the Middle East to Europe, and it is estimated that 15% of the world’s cargo passes through the sea.
The Houthis have said that their attacks are in retaliation for the war in Gaza, though they are attacking ships owned or flagged by a variety of countries, in addition to that of Israel and its allies, the US and the UK. In January, the US and its allies began a series of strikes on Yemen in response to the Red Sea attacks.
While most art shipping is concentrated between the US and Western Europe, entities in Asia and the Middle East that use the Red Sea route have had to find alternative routes and methods.
Looking for alternative routes
“In response to the disruption in the Red Sea, we have taken precautionary action to temporarily divert all affected sea freight to an alternate route which avoids this area,” said a spokesperson for Christie’s, which operates a route between London and Hong Kong. “We continue to monitor the situation, working with our partners and clients.”
Shipping companies and clients were reluctant to discuss the subject, but sources confirm that a number of Middle East events have been affected, including the Diriyah Biennale, for which Hasenkamp was contracted. The second iteration of Saudi Arabia’s contemporary art biennial opened outside of Riyadh on 20 February. There were delays on freight that was already en route in the Red Sea, and the shipping method had to be changed from sea to air for a number of works, with budget ramifications.
A spokesperson for the biennial said that he was unable to comment on internal logistics.
There are no reports of any works that were destroyed or harmed in the Houthi explosions.Beyond the Middle East, the effect on US and European art travel is little—largely because sea freight continues to be an unpopular route for sending work.
“The reality of the trade is that most of the time you don’t have the luxury of time to ship by ocean,” says Fritz Dietl, the chief executive officer of Dietl, the largest fine-art shippers in the US. “Or [the work] doesn’t fit into an ocean container, or the value is too high, or the items are just too sensitive to expose them to the potential environmental conditions of an ocean trip.”
Art shipping has become a vexed subject recently as environmental groups have identified air freight as one of the art world’s largest sources of carbon emissions. Victoria Siddall, a trustee of the advocacy group Gallery Climate Coalition, says sea freight can entail up to 90% fewer emissions than air freight.
The conflict’s effect on consumer goods, however, is much higher—particularly because a second pressure point has emerged in the lake of the Panama Canal, where water levels are so low that fewer ships can pass through. The disruptions to two key global crossings mean ships must take much longer routes around continents, adding days to supply chains and driving up insurance and other costs.
However, shippers say that the current worries around shipping are still far from the price rise during the Covid-19 pandemic, which was brought on by the cancellation of air travel. Most commercial passenger flights also carry cargo in their holds. The grounding of this ancillary means of shipping meant that the cost of sea freight spiked almost overnight.
And while the art trade might be insulated from the threats to sea shipping, it is still at risk from the wider market slowdown, which is noticeably reducing the amount of works being transported—by sea or by air.
 waits for last customers at the end of the night at her stall in New Taipei City. She has been in the industry for two years and is tired of this job but doesn’t have the energy to explore other options.)
