COLOGNE, Germany—Talk about a poisoned chalice. When Los Angeles gallerist Daniel Hug took the job of director of the 43-year-old Art Cologne fair last year, he may have been able to sense the glimmerings of a global economy gone sour, but hardly could have predicted the utter nose dive things would take last fall. And yet, with the 43rd edition having just closed last week, it looks like Hug has pulled off a decent debut, scoring points with dealers for responding to their concerns, and setting up a lively environment that attracted collectors, even if they weren’t opening their wallets very wide.

Hug’s appointment was announced last March, a month before the 2008 edition opened, amidst criticism from powerful German dealers like Christian Nagel and Monika Sprüth that Art Cologne had experienced a “bitter loss of status” in recent years. (The tea leaves could be read in the attendance figures: The fair reportedly had around 60,000 visitors in 2007, down 10,000 from the year before.) Former director Gerard Goodrow had already winnowed down the exhibitor count for the 2008 edition, in an effort to separate the wheat from the chaff, and Hug then slashed some 30 dealers, reducing the total count to 180, and moved the fair to the more convenient Hall 11 of the Cologne Exhibition Center.

This year, the first artwork visitors saw upon arrival was a 20-foot-long bronze sculpture of a fallen Icarus by Stephan Balkenhol, a somewhat inauspicious image, given talk that the global art-fair explosion, the epitome of the recent boom’s hubris, could very well plummet under the weight of its own melted waxen wings. But visitors were undeterred, and the attendance at this year’s fair held steady at 56,500 (last year was 55,000); most dealers also expressed satisfaction with the changes Hug had made.

“Dan is a dealer,” said one. “So he thinks more about the dealers as his clients. He knows that if he’s not on our team, we’re not coming back.”

Hug also lured back esteemed former exhibitors like London’s Annely Juda and Düsseldorf’s Hans Mayer, as well as Moscow gallery Marat Guelman, which last did the fair five years ago. (Hug says he had a couple of economy-related dropouts in September — galleries from Korea, China, and India, the names of which he declined to give — and says he accommodated some cash-strapped exhibitors by making booths smaller.) The vernissage was energetic, with many collectors in town for the opening of a show of American painter Christopher Wool at Cologne’s Ludwig Museum.

For a number of years after its founding in 1967 — three years before Art Basel — Art Cologne was top dog among international art fairs, which then were few. (FIAC in Paris, another mainstay, didn’t launch until 1974.) Lately, however, Cologne has been seen as more regional. But that may not be such a bad thing. Although it boasts an international roster of galleries, Hug says, “We’re a German fair. That’s not a negative. There’s a big German art market, and it hasn’t been hit as hard as elsewhere.” He adds that Art Cologne is in “a great position” for the downturn because “it hasn’t been the scene of speculative buyers” in the same way that fairs like Frieze, for instance, have been in recent years.

As for sales, for the most part collectors were cautious and generally bought more slowly and at lower price points than in years past. Salzburg and Zurich gallery Salis & Vertes reportedly had a still life by Max Ernst in its booth for €1.3 million ($1.7 million), but by the fair’s end, said Laszlo von Vertes, the gallery had parted with five paintings ranging from €100,000 to €300,000, but not the pricier Ernst.

Other dealers even found that works over €100,000 (around $130,000), were tough to sell. Dusseldorf’s Schönewald Fine Arts parted with several small paintings and works on paper by Gerhard Richter priced at €20,000 to €100,000; last year the gallery brought, and sold, sizable paintings by the popular German artist in the millions of dollars. Also in Schönewald’s booth, and perfectly suited to the current economy, were several small, whimsical sculptures in fluorescent monochrome by Katarina Fritsch, all in editions and selling like hotcakes at prices from €5,000 to €17,000. Even if they were at low- to mid-range prices, the sales in his booth as well as the activity he was seeing elsewhere assured Paul Schönewald that the market “is still alive,” at least.