Last year the city of Miami thanked former Art Basel director Sam Keller for founding the fair that has brought it so much cultural tourism by declaring December 5 Sam Keller Day. Nevertheless, the seventh edition of Art Basel Miami Beach opens next month without Keller, under the fresh management of Marc Spiegler and Annette Schönholzer. The fair goes on despite the economic gloom that deepened in September with the U.S. financial crisis. Indeed, the annual Miami spectacle has become so sturdy that it would take a hurricane to blow it away. “I think the city is expecting the same frenzy with 25 fairs,” says the local collector Dennis Scholl. “I myself think it might be more toned down this year.” Still, he adds, even if the economic doldrums lead to a “10 or 15 percent drop in intensity, it probably wouldn’t even register. This fair is a blue-chip event. Everyone knows it’s a great moment for the city.”

The serious collectors who fly, drive, sail or simply walk to Miami Beach will make a beeline for the 240 galleries (chosen from 800 applicants) in and around the convention center. Fortunately the powers that be, forever tweaking the abmb format, have come up with an antidote to art-fair attention deficit disorder. This year organizers have added a supplemental vip hour—from 11 a.m. to noon on the day after the December 3 vernissage—so that collectors needn’t feel pressured to make snap decisions before the convention center throws open its doors to the public. “A lot of the best art takes a while to catch on to,” says Spiegler. And there is, after all, a lot to see. “The most obsessive aisle walker will still end up having friends ask, ‘Did you see this? Did you see that?’ And there’s a lot of social activity on the first day. We wanted to give our vips a second chance to look before the general public enters.”

It’s probably a good move considering that, after September’s credit crisis, it may no longer be so easy for collectors to make major financial commitments in the blink of an eye. “Art Basel Miami Beach will be a barometer of the art market and the American economy in general,” predicts Adam Sheffer, a partner at the exhibiting gallery Cheim & Read, of New York. “Unlike Frieze or FIAC, it is incredibly American-centric and has brought people out of the woodwork who just a few years ago had very little interest in art collecting. As their economic situation has changed, it will be interesting to see what role art plays in their lives. Will it become just a recreational activity?”

In other words, it remains to be seen whether some people will come for the fun in the sun without buying much. However, Sheffer notes, “great works will always be great works, in a good economy or a bad one.”

And there will be plenty of great works in the main fair. New York’s Sperone Westwater is packing its Art Kabinett, a special curated section of its booth, with a group of new works by Malcolm Morely priced from $50,000 to $375,000. A 2007 David Hockney country scene is at London’s Annely Juda for $1.6 million, and Lucian Freud’s moody 2008 portrait of Sally Clarke can be seen at New York’s Acquavella—where it can be bought for around $6 million. The Paris and Salzburg gallery Thaddeus Ropac will show a brooding 2007 Georg Baselitz figure for $819,000, while Jeffrey Deitch’s booth is stocked with new works like Kehinde Wiley’s Dogon Couple, which depicts a pair of youths based on African statuary, for $125,000, and The Beatles, an exuberantly goofy painting of child rock musicians, a few putti and ballerinas on a hillside, by the Russian duo Vladimir Dubossarsky and Alexander Vinogradov, for $150,000. ABMB has a history of strong Latin American material: New York’s Galerie Lelong is bringing Metaesquema 209, a circa 1956–58 gouache by Hélio Oiticica, priced north of $150,000.

Collectors in the market for sculpture can head to Cheim & Read, which has an abstract piece in bronze and gold leaf by Lynda Benglis, from 1995–96, priced at $350,000, or New York’s Jack Shainman Gallery, which will features a new wall-hanging sculpture made from found objects by the African artist El Anatsui. (No price was available, but at Basel a version sold for $500,000.) Ropac is bringing a 2007 biomorphic bronze sculpture by the British-born Tony Cragg for $682,000. On the historical side, Kenewig, from Cologne, is displaying an austere sculpture by the Arte Povera artist Giovanni Anselmo. Made from a slab of canvas from which two rocks are suspended by steel cable, it is priced at £210,000 ($302,000).