The Armory has attracted five satellite fairs, which run Friday through Monday. In addition to Scope, which has hosted a fair of alternative galleries since 2002, there is Pulse, which held its debut fair in Miami in December and will be at the 69th Regiment Armory; DiVA, the video art fair that launched last year in the Embassy Suites hotel in Battery Park; the new L.A. Art Fair, featuring 16 contemporary galleries from Los Angeles in the Altman Building; and Fountain, which consists of three Williamsburg galleries setting up shop across Twelfth Avenue from Pier 90. (The latter three run through Sunday only.)

Scope, the oldest (at four years) and biggest (with 80 galleries) of the alternative fairs, is finding its niche by tilting toward curators as opposed to collectors, according to the fair’s president, Alexis Hubshman.

“We’re pushing from the commercial super-Olympics of the art world to being more curatorial,” Mr. Hubshman said. Scope’s organizers have founded the Scope Collection, which buys art Mr. Hubshman said will eventually go to a museum, and have invited two curators, Franklin Sirmans and David Hunt, to engage in what is described as a curatorial showdown-performance during the fair.

“We’re trying to change what an art fair can be,” Mr. Hubshman said. “We’ve made a big effort to create more of a happening, a chance to run into art.”

So that visitors do not literally run into the art – which was easy enough when the fair was staged in cramped hotel rooms – Scope has expanded to fill a large warehouse at 47th Street and Eleventh Avenue.