MAASTRICHT, NETHERLANDS.- Dealers have improved expectations for this year’s Maastricht Art Fair. The world’s most important art fair, in the small, unassuming Dutch city of Maastricht , fills an exhibition hall the size of four football fields and is so large that, before it opened, some dealers and workmen moved around it on bicycles. The scale of the event is astonishing. When it opened last Thursday, the art on show had been insured for more than $1 billion and included an estimated 70 per cent of the important Old Master paintings available for sale in the world. The stock of one leading jeweler is so valuable that when it arrived, security men sealed off the building until it was safely inside. Economic conditions for buying art have also improved this year. "There has been a noticeable increase in sales in the last three months," says Johnny van Haeften, a London Old Masters dealer. The London-based oriental art dealer Ben Janssens says: "Things are picking up and people are starting to say, ’We want to spoil ourselves.’" Although only a small percentage of the visitors to the Maastricht fair are Americans, they spend considerably and are the key to any overall recovery in the art market. The signs are that the Americans are beginning to recover from the jitters from which they have suffered since September 11 and that, even if they are still traveling less than they used to, they are spending again.

However, the weakening of the dollar, which was 1.6 to the pound at last year’s fair and now stands at around 1.9, means that dealers have had to adopt a variety of strategies to nurture the recovery in the US. The other side of the coin is that the weakness of the dollar has boosted North American dealers’ business in Europe. "Since all our prices are based in US dollars," says Canadian Robert Landau, "it is almost as though Europeans are buying at a 25 per cent discount.’’