When Haunch of Venison unveils its new 20,000-square-foot gallery at Rockefeller Center this fall, the opening exhibition will feature more than 30 major Abstract Expressionist paintings and sculptures, by top names such as Mark Rothko, Willem de Kooning, and Franz Kline. The catch is, none of the art on display will be for sale.

When Christie’s acquired Haunch of Venison last year, as part of an effort to expand its private sales business, it inflamed some already simmering ressentiment on the part of private art dealers toward the major auction houses’ scale and power in the market. There was muttering that the work of artists whom Haunch of Venison represents might be sold at Christie’s auctions, or that the gallery might get preferential terms as a bidder. (In fact, the gallery is not allowed to bid at Christie’s sales.) After all, as Christie’s co-head of Postwar and Contemporary art, Amy Cappellazzo, famously caricatured the perception of auction houses on the part of some private dealers, Christie’s and Sotheby’s are the big box stores of the art world, with the power to put mom-and-pop shops out of business.

Perhaps partly as a riposte to its critics, as a bid for scholarly credentials, or simply to show off the depth of its resources, Haunch of Venison has decided to launch its New York gallery with an entirely noncommercial exhibition. The exhibition, which opens September 12 and is called “Abstract Expressionism: A World Elsewhere,” is curated by a London-based art historian and critic, David Anfam. It will include loans from museums, private collections, and the estates of artists such as Adolf Gottlieb and Jack Tworkov.

“This is a museum show [that] happens to be in a gallery,” Haunch of Venison’s international managing director, Robert Fitzpatrick, said in a recent walk-through of the new space, which occupies the 20th and 21st floors of 1230 Avenue of the Americas and is designed by Steven Learner Studio.

“I think it’s a very smart thing to do — you can’t say ‘economically,’ because you’re spending a lot of money and you’re not selling any work,” Mr. Fitzpatrick continued. “[But] it’s a way of saying, ‘We’re a pretty serious player.'”

Haunch of Venison has also appointed a chief curator for its New York gallery, Michael Rooks, who was previously a curator at the Honolulu Academy of the Arts. Mr. Rooks will curate the gallery’s second exhibition, a show of contemporary sculpture, which Mr. Fitzpatrick said would be a “healthy mix” of works for sale and works on loan.

One of Haunch of Venison’s two founding directors, Harry Blain, said by phone from London that the gallery is currently looking for a space downtown, where it will show installation works and exhibitions of its primary-market artists. He said the gallery had not settled on a space, but was considering possibilities in Chelsea, as well as in other neighborhoods. The uptown space will be used primarily for historical shows.

For a space that has essentially been cut out of an office tower, the new gallery is quite grand. It has a double-height atrium and skylights throughout. The interior walls are exposed brick, painted white; the galleries “float” within the space, separated from the perimeter by a windowed circulation space. The private viewing rooms have a more domestic feel than the exhibition space, with wood floors and a few modernist furnishings, in order to allow collectors to better picture how the works will look in their home or office.

The aim of Christie’s in acquiring Haunch of Venison was to be able to handle private sales for its rapidly expanding international client base. “Our business has changed dramatically over the last few years in terms of the international reach,” Christie’s chief executive, Edward Dolman, said.

“The Russians, the Chinese, the Taiwanese — we have extraordinary opportunities to exploit these client relationships [with] private sales.” And since purchasing Haunch of Venison last February, Christie’s has already enjoyed unexpectedly high profits, Mr. Dolman said. In 2007, Christie’s had $542 million in private sales, roughly double the volume of the previous year. (Its rival, Sotheby’s, had $730 million in private sales.)

Although none of the works in the Abstract Expressionism exhibition will be for sale, Mr. Blain said he expected that “there will be opportunities and discussions, and business will come from it.” In the meantime, with Christie’s deep pockets, Haunch of Venison can afford to invest in developing its scholarly bona fides.

The hiring of Mr. Fitzpatrick as managing director was in this sense a savvy one, since he has worked in the academic, museum, and business worlds. Prior to joining Haunch of Venison, he was for 10 years the director of the Chicago Museum of Contemporary Art. Before that, he was the CEO of Euro Disney, the vice president of the Los Angeles Olympic Organizing Committee, the dean of the School of the Arts at Columbia University, and, for 12 years, the president of the California Institute of the Arts.

Asked how he landed at CalArts, without a background in art history, Mr. Fitzpatrick explained that, in 1974, he was included in a Time Magazine cover story on the 200 most successful people under 40. At the time, he was both a dean at Johns Hopkins University (his academic field was medieval French) and a member of the Baltimore City Council. Asked by the interviewer what his aspirations were, Mr. Fitzpatrick said he wanted to be a senator or a university president. As it happened, Donald Marron — now the chief executive of Lightyear Capital and a past president of the Museum of Modern Art — was also included on Time’s list. Mr. Marron, who was on the board of CalArts, noticed Mr. Fitzpatrick’s entry, contacted him, and eventually convinced him to take the president job.

Asked if he ever regrets not having become a senator, Mr. Fitzpatrick said no. As the head of an art school, a museum director, and now an art dealer, he sees himself as a crucial link between artists and their potential audience. “In English, the expression ‘spokesman’ or ‘spokesperson’ is pretty inelegant,” he said. “The French expression is porte parole — ‘the carrier of the word.’ And when you’re running a museum, or running an art school, or running a gallery, what you’re really doing is being the porte parole — the carrier of the word — of an artist, and what he or she is trying to do.”

Whether that expression of noble purpose will silence Haunch of Venison’s critics remains to be seen. Either way, the sniping won’t have much effect on the gallery’s sales, which will likely continue to grow exponentially.