CHICAGO—Art Chicago returns this year to the colossal Merchandise Mart, with some 140 international dealers setting up shop on the 12th floor of the landmark Art Deco building and a Buckminster Fuller geodesic dome (part of a concurrent exhibition of Fuller works at the Museum of Contemporary Art across town) taking up temporary residence in the South Lobby.

Among the treasures to be showcased at the fair, running from May 1 through 4, are fine specimens of non-Western art from the local dealer Douglas Dawson, such as an 18th-century floor mat from Mongolia made of tie-dyed felt for approximately $10,000 and a 17-inch earthenware shaman figurine from Mexico that dates to the beginning of the Common Era, priced at $32,000. London’s Browse & Darby is offering the 1914 bronze Dog, Dachshund by the French sculptor Henri Gaudier-Brzeska for around $95,000, while New York’s Nohra Haime Gallery is showing a trophy bronze of its own, Sophia Vari’s twisting-stem Ligne de partage, 1992, for $120,000. James Graham & Sons, also of New York, features a lineup of American Abstract Expressionism that includes Carnival, 1974, by Kimber Smith for $48,000, and Norman Bluhm’s geometric Bear Trail, 1958, at $350,000.

"Midwest Mixer" originally appeared in the May 2009 issue of Art+Auction. For a complete list of articles from this issue available on ARTINFO, see Art+Auction's May 2009 Table of Contents.