March 31, NEW YORK—ARTINFO heard that over the weekend, art fair impresario Samuel Keller and curator Andrea Salerno were found deep in conversation over drinks at The Tasting Room. What were they talking about? Salerno's appointment as director of the new PROJECT art fair that's had New York buzzing. PROJECT Santa Fe, an invite-only fair, will host 70 galleries bringing solo projects by new comers and art world stars alike. Partnering with SITE Santa Fe, the 800-pound gorilla of U.S. biennials, PROJECT will celebrate its inauguration in Santa Fe, New Mexico, from June 19 through 22, dates chosen to coincide with SITE's opening weekend. 

March 28, NEW YORK—On Friday morning, a smattering of Armory Show VIPs gathered in the screening room at real estate mogul Aby Rosen’s ultra-exclusive Core Club in midtown to hear a panel discussion on the economics of the art market. “Where do you see the art market going in the next six months?” one audience member asked panelists Andy Augenblick of Fine Art Capital, David Ross of Albion Gallery, and Michael Moses of the Mei/Moses Fine Art Index. No one seemed to want to field the question. “I’ll go out on a limb,” said Augenblick. He conjectured that there will be a flight to works of quality and global appeal, more material coming to the market, less sales volume in the galleries, and fewer American buyers. Bottom line, he said: “There will be a significant correction.” 

March 28, NEW YORK—The fairs aren't even over yet, but already everybody’s talking about where they’re off to next. Jane Cohan, who threw a collectors’ breakfast with her husband Jim at their gallery this morning to show off their current Tabaimo show, is looking eastward to Shanghai, where they're opening a new gallery in a few weeks. “We thought we’d give the Chinese a chance to see Western art for a change,” she told ARTINFO.

Red Dot's George Billis is also looking east, though not quite as far: He was delighted to tell us that he’s planning the first Red Dot London (the first Red Dot abroad) to coincide with Frieze in October.

Scope is looking to expand, too — to this fair week's most-gushed-about destination, Dubai. We hear director Alexis Hubshman is talking shop at the Four Seasons this afternoon, finalizing a deal that will take the fair to the growing Middle East hub and beyond. Expect details this evening.

Tomorrow evening, look for more Dubai enthusiasm at Dean Project's opening party for "Exporting Pop: A Western Fantasy." Mark Dean reminds us that this is a taster for the show of the same name that he curated for the Kuwait Art Foundation and that will open September 25.

March 28, NEW YORK—Richmond, Virginia's ADA Gallery reports that seven-time-Tour-de-France-winning Texan Lance Armstrong purchased an untitled wood sculpture (see left) by Dallas-born, Richmond-based artist Morgan Herrin for $20,000 at Scope last night, suggesting you can take the guy out of Texas, but you can't take the Texas out of the guy. 

March 27, NEW YORK—At last night’s Armory Show VIP preview, ARTINFO learned that two major artists were on the move...to new galleries. Hauser & Wirth has poached super-hot Mumbai artist Subodh Gupta from New York’s Jack Shainman Gallery, where he’s currently having a solo show, and expects to debut Gupta in London in 2009. The London- and Zurich-based gallery is also in the process of searching for a New York space.

And Lehmann Maupin, whose booth contains a large new painting by Hernan Bas, announced that the wunderkind Miami artist has indeed, as had been rumored, left his longtime New York dealer Daniel Reich. According to Rachel Lehmann, Bas will have his first solo show with the gallery in 2009.

March 26, NEW YORK—Last night Sundaram Tagore, an exhibitor at The Armory Show, threw a collectors' reception and dinner party for Subhankar Banerjee (whose show of remarkable photographs of Arctic Alaska, "Resource Wars," opens at Tagore's 27th Street gallery on Thursday). And as a reminder that the art world beyond Manhattan continues to function, he and his staff are just back from Art Dubai, which closed Saturday. They'd had quite a fair, apparently, and were particularly pleased to have sold a Banerjee photograph, Caribou on Sand (2006) to no less than the United Arab Emirates government on behalf of ruler Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum. It's one of an edition of 3, and if you'd like the next one for your palace, it's available at the Tagore gallery for $38,000.