New York—There’s nothing quite like Maastricht. The European Fine Art Fair (TEFAF), which virtually takes over the small Dutch city for more than a week each March, is not for everyone, and that’s the point. From the rigorous vetting process to the €55 ($80) admission fee—not to mention the exorbitant amount of money dealers need to pay in order to participate—exclusivity is the name of the game. This is an event for the serious collector, and those who do attend will not be disappointed. The 21st edition, held at the Maastricht Exhibition and Congress Center (MECC) from March 7 to 16, will feature some 220 dealers from 15 countries presenting over $1 billion worth of museum-quality works. Though still frankly Eurocentric, TEFAF Maastricht has grown beyond its original Old Master paintings mandate to encompass the whole range of fine and decorative arts from antiquities to contemporary, from Europe to Asia, from jewelry to illuminated manuscripts.

A new initiative called TEFAF Showcase is being launched this year in order to open the fair, on a strictly one-time-only basis, to young dealers (those in business less than 10 years), who would normally find the barriers to entry too high. Out of a pool of 80 applicants, the selection committee chose seven, and they will exhibit in small booths in a special pavilion in the fair’s West Hall. Serge Plantureux of Paris will show vintage photography, and Robert Winter of Kyoto will feature Japanese arms and armor—both categories appearing at Maastricht for the first time. Winter is also the first dealer from Japan to participate, and Jiri Svestka of Prague is the pioneer from the Czech Republic; among Svestka’s offerings will be "Anthropoides—Fight for a Woman," a gouache on paper by Frantisek Kupka (1871–1957).

Dutch Old Master specialist Johnny Van Haeften of London, on the other hand, has been there from the beginning; according to business partner David Dallas, the fair has consistently accounted for about 30 percent of the gallery’s annual business over the past two decades. Dallas is sanguine about the market despite the recent economic woes in the U.S. "In the top end of the Old Master market, the very rich are always very rich," he says, "and the sub-prime real estate problems are not going to affect the majority of them. Things up to $100,000 are flat, but above $500,000 that’s not the case." New York Old Master dealer Adam Williams of Adam Williams Fine Art Ltd., who is also exhibiting, agrees. "The economy will affect the lower end of the market, the decorative end," he says.

Van Haeften, notes Dallas, "is very fond of the whole Brueghel family, and we’re taking a number this year— all subject to not being sold in the intervening time." They will have a "Massacre of the Innocents" painted as a winter scene by Pieter Brueghel the Younger priced at $3.5 million, and by the same artist but "on a slightly jollier note," a "Wedding Procession" at an asking price of $4.5 million. A set of four oval paintings by Pieter the Younger illustrating proverbs will also be on offer, as well as an early (1590s) alpine landscape on copper by Jan the Elder. From the non-Brueghel contingent, a church interior by a little-known Rotterdam master, Anthonie De Lorme, is priced at $3 million and described by Dallas as "an absolutely fantastic picture in a perfect, perfect state."

New York dealer Anthony Blumka, a specialist in medieval and Renaissance works, says, "Maastricht is clearly the most important fair there is. We have about 20 clients that come to see us there yearly, so we bring things we know they’ll be interested in, of the highest quality possible." Among them are an ivory diptych of the Virgin and Child flanked by angels and the Crucifixion, made in Paris between 1300 and 1325 and retaining traces of polychromy and gilding; a rare miniature altar from Flanders, circa 1525; a German tempera and gold on panel depicting the martyrdom of a female saint, circa 1390; and a reliquary casket chasse with champlevé enamel on copper over an oak core, from Limoges, France, circa 1200. The asking prices range from $300,000 to $1 million.

In the modern and contemporary category, New York gallery Sperone Westwater is focusing on what partner Angela Westwater calls "artists who are senior exemplars of their particular aesthetic"—the contemporary English painter Malcolm Morley and the postwar Italian abstractionists Piero Manzoni and Lucio Fontana. Americans, says Westwater, have only recently begun to appreciate "the role Manzoni and Fontana played in terms of radical abstraction in Europe after World War II." The Fontanas are priced from $2 million to $4 million.

"Maastricht has become so important to us, and after participating for five years we have a clearer sense of the right kind of material," says Westwater. "This is probably the most highly educated and sophisticated group of fairgoers. In the beginning, we didn’t quite know how to work it." Among younger artists, Sperone Westwater will show the Canadian figural sculptor Evan Penny and the Italian duo Bertozzi & Casoni, who make sculptures out of ceramics combined with decaying materials like garbage. "At this kind of fair, you think of the representation of the human figure," says Westwater. "Look back at antique torsos, Renaissance bronzes. There’s a resonance that transcends historical periods."

Last year, the TEFAF organizers decided to reduce the number of attendees, in order to increase the proportion of buyers to lookers, as well as to ease overcrowding at the fair and in the city’s hotels. The higher admission fee brought the total down from 84,000 in 2006 to 71,000 in 2007, a figure they expect to repeat this year. At a fair like Maastricht, less is definitely more.