This year at Art Basel Miami Beach, all eyes will be not only on the world-class art but also on the number of red dots that pop up beside works that have sold.

With U.S. and international economies teetering, the glitzy sideshows and champagne-soaked celebrations that overwhelmed past Basel weekends are expected to be scaled back, resulting, perhaps, in a more reasonable schedule for those who like to check out as many Basel offshoots as the clock permits.

The big question will be how much today's financial uncertainties (including Switzerland's $5 billion bailout of UBS, Art Basel's top sponsor) will slow down a contemporary art market that had been soaring. ''It's very hard to predict what will happen in terms of sales,'' says Basel co-director Marc Spiegler, who with Annette Schonholzer this year takes the Art Basel helm from Sam Keller, now director of the Beyeler Foundation in Switzerland.

''But Art Basel Miami Beach never started out to be the Cannes Film Festival of art events. It has always very much held the core values of the art world,'' Spiegler says. ``It's been about strong art and strong galleries. If there are fewer fashion parties, that doesn't change much. If anything, it means people will be more focused on the art.''

And, as usual, there will be a mind-blowing number of sculptures, paintings, drawings and videos to see at the Miami Beach Convention Center. Prices start at hundreds of dollars for works by young artists and leap well into the millions for museum-quality pieces. Art Basel's seventh year in Miami Beach features more than 240 of the biggest galleries from the United States, Canada, Europe, Latin America, Asia and elsewhere showing work by more than 2,000 artists, including figures such as Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, Robert Rauschenberg, Cindy Sherman and Yayoi Kusama.

At Basel for the first time this year: The Third Line gallery from United Arab Emirates, Sfeir-Semler from Lebanon and SKE from Bangalore.

Also new this year is the fact that Basel is making it easier for the general public to engage with art, thanks to an expanded, better-focused public-arts project. In previous years, outdoor pieces have been scattered around South Beach, but this year all but one work will be at Lummus Park on Ocean Drive, between 10th and 14th streets.

Ai Weiwei's Bubble, composed of 100 blue ceramic bubbles spread over an area of about 2,000 square feet, will be set up on Watson Island.

Eight more works, most site-specific and commissioned for the fair, will stand along Lummus Park, including: Japanese artist Tadashi Kawamata's Tree Huts in the palm trees; Brazilian artist Ana Linnemann's The Invisibles,featuring a spinning palm tree, and Czech artist Jiri Kovanda's poetic interventions or ''actions,'' in which he will bump into passersby and deliver lines from scripts in such a way that folks don't suspect they're witnessing theater.

Kovanda's performances will be featured during the free Nights at Lummus Park, 8-10 p.m. Dec. 4 and Dec. 5.

''The beauty of public art is that people interact with it unexpectedly,'' Spiegler says. ``People who are walking through Lummus Park will be sucked into art.''

A hot ticket for Baselgoers this year is Art Loves Film, 8:30 p.m. Dec. 5 at the Colony Theatre on Lincoln Road. Featured is the documentary Herb and Dorothy by Megumi Sasaki, which tells the story of art-world legends Herb and Dorothy Vogel.

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