Dutch gallery hosts world class exhibit

MAASTRICHT, Netherlands - The Landau Fine Art shop has the perfect location for a commercial art gallery: the corner of Champs Élysées and Madison Avenue. This ideal juncture - where taste and marketing meet - really does exist, but for just 11 days each year.The rest of the year Landau Fine Art is on Sherbrooke Street West in Montreal. But for almost two weeks annually, in the middle of March, some 90 of its finest pieces are on display at the European Fine Art Fair (TEFAF) in Maastricht.TEFAF is the world's most important annual art fair. About 275 art dealers from 20 countries bring a selection of their stock and set up shop on "streets" with names like Sunset Boulevard, the Faubourg Saint-Honoré and the Königsallee. It's a mall where you can wander past Rembrandts and Monets, ancient Greek statues and modern Italian jewelry, a silver soup tureen owned by Russia's Catherine the Great and a prayer book made for Charles V. For art lovers it's a supercharged day of gallery-going, from Old Masters to contemporary art, from furniture to photography. The fair attracts the world's richest and most serious art collectors. More than 200 institutions send representatives with their cheque books, and the local airport can have as many as 170 private jets waiting for the return of their owners with the latest treasures.This crème-de-la-crème of the art world has its own Vernissage, or preview day (and some 10,000 of them show up for it), but after that the fair's next 10 days are open to the public. The 2015 dates are March 13-22. You don't have to buy anything, but if you're thinking you might like to become a collector at some point, or simply want the heady experience of wandering through an eye-popping Disneyland of fine art, this is the place.Admission is 55 euros for a day, but a better deal is the passe-partout ticket for 115 euros, good for all 10 days. Either comes with a copy of the fair's catalogue, which will about double the weight of your carry-on bag. For an extra 5 euros there's an hour-long orientation tour daily at noon, or the free Dealers' Choice tour at 4:30 p.m., taking in five or six shops whose gallerists will expand on some of their items. Not all are riveting, but if you get a good one - Robert Hall, say - you can be brought up to speed on Chinese snuff bottles in 10 entertaining and educational minutes.Quite a bit of what's on sale at TEFAF is out of most people's range- Robert Landau says that his items start at $400,000 and go to $25 million. A good Van Gogh costs more. It's not always the case, though. At Thomas Heneage Art Books, from London, I could have put down £70,000 for a volume of Max Beckmann etchings, but I also found a book for £14.95.Maastricht, two hours by train south of Amsterdam, is where the Dutch come to shop and eat when Paris is too much effort. It's also the birthplace of the euro. What better place to spend a few?If you go: For more information on the European Fine Art Fair (TEFAF), visit its website at tefaf.com. For information on travel in the Netherlands, visit the Netherlands Board of Tourism website at holland.com.More stories at culturelocker.com