Art Society

To set up Art Society, place the museum board, value tokens, and four prestige markers in the center of the play area. Supply decor tiles nearby. Each player receives a player board, matching scoring markers, a wall bonus token, and a hand of 20 secret bidding cards numbered one through 20. Players are dealt a random starting painting to place on the blue wall area of their board, covering at least one star. Finally, white starting bid cards numbered one through four are shuffled and dealt. The player with the lowest value receives the gavel as the first auctioneer.

The goal of Art Society is to collect, arrange, and display art on your gallery wall to gain the highest prestige. Players must strategically bid on paintings at auctions, fit them onto their personal boards while avoiding matching adjacent styles, and try to boost the value of specific art types at the museum.

Each round consists of preparing the auction, placing bids, acquiring paintings, placing tiles, and increasing prestige. The auctioneer selects a number of blind painting tiles equal to players plus one, pairs them with value tokens, and reveals them. Players secretly play a bid card from their hand, and ties are broken using underlying cards. Starting with the highest bidder, players select one painting and add it to their gallery. Placed paintings cannot touch others of the same type, or they score no prestige, but touching matching frames earns decor tiles. Leftover auction paintings increase museum prestige values.

Final scoring grants prestige points for paintings in each color multiplied by the final prestige values on the museum board. Players add points for decor tile shields and gain bonuses for paintings located within the gallery's eyeline row or for completely filling their gallery. Players lose points for unfilled corner spaces and stored excess paintings.

Rounds continue until a player fills their gallery wall, players run out of bid cards in their hand, or any player accumulates two excess paintings. Once triggered, the current round finishes and final scoring takes place. The player with the most points wins, with ties broken by the remaining total value of secret bid cards in hand.