Herman Wouters for The New York Times

The European Fine Art Fair in Maastricht is expected to draw around 70,000 visitors and collectors. More Photos »

By GUY TREBAY

Published: March 23, 2012

Maastricht, the Netherlands

 

THE lady in pearls was shimmying under a table. Valentino skirt tucked primly around her knees, she lay on her back beaming a flashlight on a yellowed label, a scrap of paper that lent apparent weight to the proposition that the article on view was as old as its seller claimed.

This was at the European Fine Art Fair, where it is not at all unusual to see well-polished people getting intimate with French-waxed consoles, where old specimens can be seen squinting through loupes at granite busts of even older specimens and where for the past quarter-century the acquisitive rich have descended each spring in hordes. The early social arbiter Emily Post once characterized groups like this as the Worldys, the Oldnames and the Eminents...