How Dealers Set Up Multimillion-Dollar Art Sales

By the end of Wednesday’s VIP day at London’s Frieze Art Fair, collectors will have spent hundreds of millions of dollars on art that's been shipped in from around the world. “The first day is by far the most significant day,” said Amalia Dayan, a co-founder of Luxembourg and Dayan, a gallery with London and New York locations. “The majority of the works we sell will be sold in the first 24 hours."

While that aggressively short timeline implies that very wealthy people are impetuously spending enormous sums of money on a whim, the fair itself is actually the final stage of a highly choreographed, carefully structured, months-long buildup. Using Luxembourg and Dayan as a case study, the following explains how dealers prepare for their multimillion-dollar sales.