In every city on the tour, Brochet scouts out the most promising young local talents. Of the artists I meet here, a handful are as good as many working in the capital, and all, regardless of age or aesthetic preference, are keen students of art history, although lacking exposure to the latest international contemporary works. Our first studio visit in Khabarovsk is with Kyrill Yakovlev, 46, who worked as an architect in Soviet times but stopped, in 1987, because there was "no future and no scope for creativity, so I started to draw and paint." To earn money during perestroika, he made and sold jeans, mastering silkscreen techniques to produce convincing Levi’s labels. His studio doubles as a tiny flat, and much of his output, which includes collages and pastel-colored fantasy landscapes populated by dinosaurs on magic carpets, is stored on his sweltering balcony.

From Yakovlev’s studio we head downtown to the Dalny Vostok Art Museum, where "New Rules" is being installed. In Vladivostok the exhibition was held in the Primorsky Regional Museum, a former bank now full of model ships, telescopes and stuffed leopards; in Krasnoyarsk, it was in the former Lenin Museum. Brochet says it’s better to be in an institution like this one in Khabarovsk, where the director and staff know how to display art.

Inside the museum is a tangle of cables, boxes and Bubble Wrap, and installers will be working all night. How will Valery Koshlyakov’s giant drip-style take on a train-station notice board get through the doors? It won’t. The Koshlyakov stays on the landing, which it transforms into a waiting room.

Logistics are Brochet’s biggest problem. The works were flown from Moscow to the first venue but have since been transported by train. Special freight cars with enlarged doors are needed for the crated pictures. There is no freight service from Vladivostok to Krasnoyarsk, so Brochet hired a special train for more than $30,000 — part of the cost of doing cultural business in remote outposts.

At the afternoon press conference, a few local journalists are joined by a throng of businessmen, nouveau riche art lovers and museum supporters, many of the latter pretty young women clamoring to pose with Brochet. One comes up to him in tears and cries, "It’s the first time I have ever been moved by an exhibition!" Black-robed models serve Ararat cognac. Crowds mill on the landing beneath Koshlyakov’s work. Polina Rekhovskaya, the deputy editor of the local culture magazine Bonzaï, declares that "everyone is gobsmacked" by the exhibition, although "older people are shocked." The cause of that shock may be the video of quick-fire comedy sketches by the Blue Noses duo or the one of Oleg Kulik’s controversial Mad Dog performance, during which he bites passersby. "Why don’t you stage your exhibition in a zoo?" is one outraged viewer’s comment on the show’s Web site.

That evening, Brochet hosts a reception at the Hospital Club. Downstairs it’s a heaving disco. Upstairs the entrepreneur lounges on a red plastic sofa, declaiming his cultural credo to the educated professionals, who are eager to emulate their free-spending counterparts in Moscow. Brochet is hoping that these newly rich businessmen, with money left over after securing fancy houses and cars, will be lured by the status boost of owning art. It is too early to say how successful his efforts to cultivate connoisseurs have been, but this evening they listen raptly as Brochet compares music and art. "Modern music cannot renew itself, but art can." In Moscow, he says, there are 100 major collectors, of whom 25 purchase a new piece each month, while five acquire a work a week. He exhorts his audience to "buy works by 10 good artists: Keep five for yourself, and lend five to a museum for a couple of years — that will increase their value." Dramatic pause. "You will need good advisers. I’m independent, not like dealers."

Brochet has been asked to "advise" on the creation of a new Khabarovsk contemporary-art museum. The regional governor has already OK’d the funds. "We’re catalysts," Brochet says with a smile. (Now, however, their buying impulses may be on hold because of the global credit crunch.)