Art Dubai opened Wednesday at Madinat Jumeirah. This year’s event builds on its reputation as a fair of discovery and is the most global fair to date with 85 participating galleries from 34 countries, organizers say. Over 500 artists will be seen in the gallery halls and across the not-for-profit programs.

“Art Dubai’s development over the past eight years reflects the extraordinary growth of the UAE art scene,” said Antonia Carver, fair director, Art Dubai.

“We’re thrilled to be opening our eighth edition with such a strong and diverse range of 85 gallery exhibitions, plus our largest not-for-profit program to date,” she added.

This year, the galleries are presented in three distinct programs – Contemporary, Modern and Marker; the curated section of invited art spaces and galleries focusing in 2014 on Central Asia and the Caucasus.

Art Dubai’s contemporary gallery halls remain the largest section of the fair with more than 70 galleries exhibiting new works for sale. Returning galleries include Athr (Jeddah), Galerie Chantal Carousel (Paris), galerist (Istanbul), Grey Noise (Dubai), Victoria Miro (London), Experimenter (Kolkata) among others, and galleries that are joining for the first time. This year, galleries making their debut at Art Dubai include Ota Fine Arts (Tokyo), GallerySKE (Delhi/Bangalore), Marisa Newman Projects (New York), Tyler Rollins (New York), Baró Galeria (São Paulo), Gladstone Gallery (New York), Marian Goodman (New York/Paris), Galerie Greta Meert (Brussels), Galleria Franco Noero (Turin), Yavuz Fine Art (Singapore), and 313 Art Project (Seoul), among others.