PARIS—Having bought control of Parcours des Mondes from its founder, Rik Gadella?the fair entrepreneur who also launched Paris Photo and later decamped to Laos in financial straits—Pierre Moos promises “a new team and new ambitions” for the tribal-art event’s seventh edition, taking place from September 10 through 14 in a cluster of St.-Germain-des-Prés galleries. The Parcours has seen a 20 percent spike in participation this year. Among the 63 dealers representing 11 countries are such heavyweight recruits as Bernard de Grunne and Pierre Dartevelle, both from Brussels, and Thomas Murray, the head of the U.S. Antique Tribal Art Dealers Association. Murray is bringing a 17th-century Japanese wooden Kotobide Noh theater mask. Another highlight is the steatite Mahen Yafe head from Sierra Leone at Johann Lévy of Paris.

Moos’s innovations include an easy-to-use catalogue, sent free to the 12,000 readers of Tribal Art magazine, which Moos also owns; an exhibition in the French Mint of 150 African sculptures owned by the former modern-art dealers Michel and Liliane Durand-Dessert; and a VIP lounge for collectors and exhibitors at Galerie Jeanne-Bucher, on 53 Rue de Seine, where 20th-century works by Jean Dubuffet, the Portuguese-French abstractionist Maria Helena Vieira da Silva and the French Cubist sculptor Henri Laurens, among others, commune with Olmec, Mayan and Sepik figures. There will be something for every taste and purse, vows Moos: “Alongside priceless masterpieces worth hundreds of thousands of euros, we offer works of art for less than €2,000 ($3,200)—the price of a lithograph!”

"Facing Forward" originally appeared in the September 2008 issue of Art+Auction. For a complete list of articles from this issue available on ARTINFO, see Art+Auction's September 2008 Table of Contents.