The Master, Judd Tully, talks to the organizer of FIAC’s new  fair-within-the-fair, “The Modern Project,” Daniel Malingue and finds out there’s a bigger plan “ to take some good things away from auction.”

“That is my hope,” he said. “To present works just like Christie’s and Sotheby’s do.”

Malingue envisions taking the new enterprise to different dramatic settings every six months, “so a seller will come to me and say, ‘I’d like to put my fabulous Mondrian in your exhibition.” And in fact, his vision is already becoming reality: The government of Abu Dhabi invited the 10 exhibitors to show at next month’s Abu Dhabi Art fair there. […]

As for the reception of the new, higher-end section, all early indicators make it a hit. “You’re seeing here potentially the best of the market, and who doesn’t want to see that?” says New York art adviserSandy Heller. “It’s a brilliant effort to make this fair a permanent stop on the art trail.”

“We already have reserves on the Sam Francis to a German collector for four million Swiss francs” said Catherine Couturier of Basel’s Galerie Beyeler about Way Then Opened II (1962–63), “and we have a reserve on our Fernand Leger, Le Drapeau from 1919, at six million Swiss francs.”