For art lovers who found it hard to breathe—let alone shop—in the rarefied air of ABMB, what with the in-your-face coddling of wealthy VIPs, Miami’s other fairs offered more accessible prices and more laid-back vibes. For example, the Red Dot Art Fair, tucked into an Art Deco hotel in the South Beach district, found dealers from around the U.S. tossing out the beds and taking over guest rooms to set up temporary galleries. Carrie Haddad of the self-named gallery in Hudson, New York, said, “Collectors say they appreciate the intimate scale and atmosphere of this event—and they’re buying.”

As expected, Art Basel Miami Beach featured works by such international stars as Damien Hirst, whose “For the Love of God, Laugh” (2007), a silkscreen-on-paper image of a gem-encrusted human skull with real diamond dust—a riff on Hirst’s notorious $100 million cranium sold last year—was priced at $20,000. By contrast, at smaller events, like the Geisai Miami fair-within-a-fair at Pulse, artists such as Eric Doeringer minded their own booths and sold works directly to buyers, sometimes for $250 or less.

The day after Art Basel Miami Beach closed, the art world received a jolting reminder of just how unstable the broader economy is when UBS announced a $10 billion write-down for 2007 in the value of its subprime mortgage-backed assets. Nevertheless, according to a bank spokesman, UBS remains committed to its ongoing sponsorship of the annual Art Basel and Art Basel Miami Beach fairs.