Leading US contemporary art fair The Armory Show opens to the public Thursday in New York, with 243 galleries testing the robustness of the art market in difficult economic times.

VIP guests and the media were able to preview the four-day fair Wednesday at its expanded home on Pier 94 and Pier 92 in western Manhattan.

Now in its 11th year, the show will feature modern art, as well as contemporary, so that freshly created works will mix with significant existing masterpieces.

For dealers, the show will be a test of prices in a stormy art market.

New York auctions have seen abysmal performances in the last six months.

But the international art frenzy reignited at the Yves Saint Laurent auction in Paris last month, where buyers paid a staggering 373.5 million euros (472 million dollars), making it the biggest private art sale in history.

"It remains to be seen whether the Yves Saint Laurent sale represents a sighting of the groundhog or a curious footnote in the continuing decline of the art market," website artinfo.com commented.

"This week's Armory Show, the market's first big post-Saint Laurent test and New York's most important fair of the year, will go a long way toward answering both of those questions."