Variety was the hallmark of the latest incarnation of Art Palm Beach, which ran January 15-19 — not just in the mix of contemporary art, photography, and design that gave the fair its former name of Palm Beach3, but also in the origins, orientations, and installations of the 70 exhibitors. These dealers hail from cities large and small in countries near and far: from Stockbridge, Massachusetts, to Stockholm, Sweden; from Buenos Aires to Bucharest; from Denmark to Dubai. Some spotlight new conceptual works in traditional media, while others accumulate decorative crafts using unconventional materials or hang secondary-market pictures salon-style.

“There’s something for everyone,” remarked Palm Beach gallerist Holden Luntz, who found himself in the company of more photography exhibitors than last year. “I like the idea of bringing in new dealers. There’s a mix of good and marginal, but every fair is going to have that in this economy.” He appreciated the more refined décor, cafés, and exhibition spaces, as well as how “the reconfiguration of the floor made it easier to navigate.” Luntz mounted a rare solo show of fashion hotshot Bruce Webers personal series “Gentle Giants” of Newfoundlands and “Bear Pond” of nude models cavorting at his summer residence in the Adirondacks. When ARTINFO visited, the silver gelatin prints, with several sizes available in editions of five, were selling briskly for $7,000 to $12,000.

Luntz balanced this classic portraiture with a project booth of the subjective reality favored by a younger generation and featured in the gallery’s current group exhibition “Myth, Magic and Mystery,” represented here by two artists who pose actors in specially constructed sets, then digitally alter the exposures to create imaginary scenarios. Dianne Blell depicts scenes from the courtship of legendary Hindu lovers Radha and Krishna in intricate composites of up to 50 layers, which took from 2000 to 2007 to complete, for an effect that recalls 17th-century Mogul miniature paintings. They are available in three sizes: the smallest in editions of 10 starting at $3,500, the medium format in editions of 8 starting at $5,500, and the largest (of which two sold as of press time) in editions of 7 from $7,500. In his whimsical “adult fairytales,” Jamie Baldridge “attempts to find ways of ordering and making sense of the surreal chaos of the world,” explains Huntz, who sold half a dozen of the archival pigment photographs, printed by the artist from 2005 to 2008 ($6,500 for the large format and $1,800 for the medium, in editions of seven).

By Sunday afternoon, organizers International Fine Art Exhibitions (IFAE) had already counted 16,000 visitors (a reportedly record attendance for the event), with two days until doors closed on Tuesday. “Today the dealers are demanding that you deliver the people,” said David Lester, who founded the fair with his wife Lee Ann in 1998 but sold it a few years later, only to resume ownership a year ago. “When this place is packed, it gives people an urgency to buy. If not, why make a decision?”

Some collectors were still circling coveted pieces, leading Peter Osborne of London’s Osborne Samuel to conclude, “We won’t know how well we’ve done from the fair until April.” He predicted a showdown between an Italian collector and a New Yorker with a private sculpture garden for the $300,000 grouping of five life-sized figures that Icelandic sculptor Steinunn Thorarinsdottir cast from iron and pierced with glass in 2008. Four of the five editions of Argentinian Graciela Saccos enigmatic 2009 video installation of anonymous pedestrians shot from below had already sold at $7,500 each.

Still, Osborne reported that one of those buyers had expressed disappointment at finding fewer of the cutting-edge works they had become accustomed to at previous editions run by DMG World Media. “The Lesters seem to be taking it in a different direction,” observed Osborne, who nonetheless likened the surrounding wares to the kinds of objects he has often seen in the homes of the Palm Beach clientele the fair has helped nurture since its inception. The British dealer is considering a switch to the American International Fine Art Fair that IFAE produces at the same location in February, but said the corresponding emphasis on the gallery’s older inventory “would be a shame, because we like mixing modern and contemporary, as people expect us to do.”

While David Lester acknowledged a commercial, “been-there-done-that” character to some of the booths, he insisted, “I want this fair to have broad appeal, quality art, and accessibility. My goal is to go out and bring in much more interesting art from around the globe.” That will entail a further reduction in the already dwindling pool of secondary-market and design exhibitors. “I didn’t understand a few years ago the importance of the primary market,” admitted Lester, who is also addressing demographic changes. “When we started here, Palm Beach was where New Yorkers came for the winter.” While that core contingent remains, he said, “now there are so many more nationalities.”

He hopes to bring in more “great undiscovered artists” like the Shanghai-born, San Francisco-based Shan Shan Sheng, who was invited to present a special exhibition under the auspices of the International Association of Art, the largest non-governmental organization of visual artists affiliated with UNESCO. Sheng sold an abstract painting to a Utah collector for $23,000 while raising support to re-stage Open Wall, her 60-foot-long interpretation of a section of the Great Wall of China stacked with 2,208 glass bricks corresponding to the years it took to construct.

The installation debuted last summer at the Biennale in Venice, where master glassblowers helped Sheng lace the translucent blocks with trails of gold, yellow, red, and orange pigment that glow with shifting intensity in the sun- and moonlight. Displayed alongside a documentary from the Biennale are several variations of the brick that sponsors can take home for a $2,800 donation to help defray the prohibitive cost of shipping to and installing in future destinations such as the 2010 World Expo in Shanghai.

Another Chinese artist putting a conceptual twist on his cultural heritage is Ma Jun, a young native of Qingdao who molds porcelain to mimic modern (but dated) consumer goods like transistor radios and soda bottles. New York dealer Regis Krampf had previously sold Talking Head David Byrne a television and the owners of Chanel the entire series in the iconic shape associated with Chanel No. 5 perfume bottles. An artist showing with Florida’s Habatat Galleries was taken with a television on display, but selected from the catalog of Ma’s recent solo show a more vibrant version emblazoned with dragons in a dense pattern reminiscent of graffiti or tattoos and priced at $22,000. Krampf also placed two of Liu Zheng’s erotically charged paintings of Lolitas from 2007-08 with the owner of a private Palm Beach museum, for $6,000 apiece.

Glass has long been one of the fair’s main attractions, although fewer dealers in the specialty were admitted this year. The newest entrant was Gallery Litvak, which dealer Roxanne Present Cohen just opened in Tel Aviv after a year-and-a-half of traveling to fairs. For $23,500 she sold a Floridian collector Paravent I (2009), in which young Berlin sculptor Julius Weiland fused industrial glass tubes into an upright rectangular shape that reminded him of a folding room divider. Weiland, who was on hand, said he was pleased to see the range of works on display and the serious interest among the substantial crowd.

That power of attraction, admirable for any fair in an inhospitable economic climate, bodes well for the process of reinvention that the Lesters have only just begun.