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...

 

By CAROL VOGEL

Published: March 18, 2012

MAASTRICHT, the Netherlands — There’s nothing unusual about hearing French, Italian, German or even Russian spoken at the European Fine Art Fair. But this year, as the doors to the cavernous convention center here opened for the invitation-only preview on Thursday, Chinese was also a noticeable part of the mix.

Keenly aware that Asia is the fastest-growing segment of the art market right now, a group of the fair’s dealers and organizers made a visit to Beijing and Shanghai in September to meet with collectors’ clubs and private museums and to talk up the fair. As a result of that trip alone, officials here said, about 100 visas were issued to Chinese collectors for visits to the Netherlands. And by the time the 10-day fair ends, on Sunday, they expect that 250 to 500 collectors, dealers and other art world figures will have made a trip here from China.

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