In Modern Art, players compete to gain the most money by buying and selling paintings at auctions and reselling them for profit. The game consists of four rounds--in each, works by up to five Artists will be offered for sale, and auctioned off in various ways. Players take on the roles of art dealers / collectors. It is their decision which artworks to sell, and how to sell them. So, successful players must balance two aims, firstly collecting the best artworks for their own collections, forwarding the careers of those artists from whom they have most to gain--and at the same time, raising as much money as possible by successfully auctioning off those works that don't fit their own strategy, and picking up their own fancies as cheaply as possible.

All players take turns running the auctions, which come in many different styles. Whoever offers the top bid owns the painting and sells it at the end of the round. The price the painting fetches is based on the popularity of the artist and how well his paintings have sold in the past. The player with the most money at the end of four rounds of buying and selling wins.

These Art Dealers dream of fame and riches, but dreams can vanish in an instant, leaving the player with a gallery full of last year's art, unwanted and valueless. Only those with a nose for tomorrow's tastes today will rise to the top of the Art world!