… and now he does his art-collecting at fairs in Basel, London and New York.

Who cares? The leading New York galleries do. In a front-page story in the New York Times, reporter Graham Bowley detects a major shift in the way the high-end art market works:

Globalization has come to the art market, and dealers are being forced out of their comfortable galleries in venerable art capitals like New York and London and jumping on a worldwide carousel of art fairs from Miami to Hong Kong to Basel to São Paulo [no mention, though, of the annual Dallas Art Fair] . . .

But their disruptive economics are not only shaking up dealers’ lives, they are also shaking up the art market, especially for galleries below the top tier. While large galleries can — and do — pay the art fairs’ hefty fees and the cost of this globe-trotting existence, others find they are priced out or can’t compete. The ripple effects are starting to be felt in prime gallery districts like the Upper East Side and SoHo in New York.

And Rachofsky (of the fabulous Rachofsky House) is part of the “moneyed class” doing this globe-trotting shopping:

One longtime art collector, Howard Rachofsky of Dallas, used to buy his art mainly in New York, but in the past year has traveled to fairs in Basel, New York and London.

“You want to see art, and you want to see the people behind it, get to know the gallerists and, ultimately, the artists, and the easiest and most efficient way of doing this is at an art fair,” Mr. Rachofsky said.

“It is really about networking and seeing an art gallerist from Düsseldorf and a gallerist from Madrid 50 feet from each other, and getting a chance to spend a few quality minutes with each one of them,” he added. “That is the reason we go.”