At a time when satellite art events like Volta and this year's Independent have been moving to claim the vanguard of New York's Armory Week, a question that swirled around the  Armory Show's expanse of over 200 contemporary-art galleries at Pier 94 last week was whether the marquee fair had become too corporate and lost its edge. Since the 2007 takeover of the home-grown fair by Chicago–based Merchandise Mart Properties Inc., the Armory Show has become a much bigger creature, its earlier roots now unrecognizable.

Begun in 1994 as a funky enterprise at the then-dilapidated Gramercy Hotel, were it was known as the Gramercy International Art Fair, the event changed its name to the Armory Show in 1999 in tribute to the storied 1913 international exhibition that first brought modern art to America. Of the original four founders, the avant-garde dealers Pat Hearn and Colin de Land have passed away, and Matthew Marks has long since dropped out of the fair — leaving only former Chelsea dealer Paul Morris, who today is affiliated with the management side of Merchandise Mart, the giant combine that hosts approximately 70 trade shows a year.

Doesn’t that sound corporate? Compare, for example, the newborn antidote to the Armory, in the sleek guise of the 40-gallery-strong Independent show that took over the old Dia building on West 22nd with free admission, an open layout, and the egalitarian absence of any V.I.P. room.

The Armory Show is “definitely going in the direction of a bigger fair,” says 303 Gallery's Lisa Spellman, an early participant in the formation of the original Gramercy fair and a current exhibitor at Pier 94. “Even with its international reach, I feel like it has become more nameless.”Spellman wasn’t complaining about commerce, however — she sold a small–scaled 2009 painting by Whitney Biennial artist Maureen Gallace, Late October Frost, to an Istanbul collector for $47,000. “It’s the first time I did business with him, and he actually came to the fair,” said Spellman.

And even though some nefarious soul swiped all of her stand’s West Elm folding chairs the previous evening, Spellman praised the organizers for the marked improvement of the infrastructure. She said she was also grateful for the emergence of a more sophisticated crowd of collectors at the fair, who aren’t asking, “What artists do you have under 22 years old?”

That bump up in refinement may have something to do with the semi-invasion of Greek collectors who came to town this week for the gala opening of the New Museum's “Skin Fruit” exhibition, and the attendant week of parties thrown by mega-collector Dakis Joannou, arranged for Jeff Koons to curate the show's assembly of work from his collection.

The nagging discomfort of what it means for a non-art entity like the Merchandise Mart to run a contemporary art fair gradually subsided as the rush of commerce took over. For this observer, it felt like déjà vu all over again (thank you, Yogi Berra) seeing Damien Hirsts 90-by-60-inch Skull with Glass of Water from 2007 at the White Cube stand. It's part of the same hand-painted series — all mounted behind elaborate glass-encased frames a la Francis Bacon — that debuted in London at the Wallace Collection last fall to a hailstorm of criticism.

“We’ve had a great response to the U.S. premier of Damien’s blue paintings,” says White Cube’s Neil Wenman, who said the painting sold to an American collector for £2.75 million ($4.1 million).Jay Jopling's White Cube also sold MoMAfeted artist Gabriel Orozcos 2008 painting A Samuri Tree for $250,000. and Anthony Gormleys 75-inch-high steel Sublimate XXX figure, from 2009, for £250,000 ($376,000), as well as a trio of rhinestone- and glitter-encrusted Raqib Shaw works on paper from 2009, including Self-Portrait as the Savior of the World, for $65,000 each.In addition, the gallery sold Rachel Kneebones impressive porcelain sculpture of entwined figures and floral elements, Et in Arcadia Ego, 2009, for $60,000. “There seems to be a new level of optimism,” added Wenman, “and we’re reassured at how well it has gone.”

The fair had a bit of hidden treasure, tucked away by the rickety stairway to Pier 92 with a reprise of the famed Los Angeles Ferus Gallery staged by Tim Nye and Franklin Parrasch.The duo managed to rent the original space in for a similar show, “Ferus Greatest Hits #I,” held during Art LA Contemporary in January. The maze of California-minted artworks was jaw-dropping and fun to see in a salon-like setting, all the more exotic under a small grouping of floating silver balloons by Andy Warhol, who had his solo debut at Ferus.

A major 1960 work by the late, great Ferus co-founder Edward Kienholz, Untitled (Piano with Keys), sold to Dallas collector Howard Rachofsky, who has promised his collection to the Dallas Museum. It sold just under the asking price of $200,000, according to Franklin Parrasch. The team also sold Robert Irwins Twin Towers, 1977, comprised of a black-and-white photograph of the vanished Manhattan landmark with an acetate overlay, for $50,000 to another collector with museum-donation plans; an Ed Moses Untitled graphite on paper from 1965 for $30,000; and a Billy Al Bengston painting, Dento, 1968, for $75,000. They also sold the flotilla of five Warhol Silver Clouds, including their original 1964 packaging, for $5,000 each.

The mini Ferus ensemble injected a needed bit of theater to the otherwise and mostly chock-a-block lines of galleries doing their best to attract attention, and provided a tonic reminder of days when contemporary art was in the hands of a few dauntless risk-takers, not corporate behemoths.