Tefaf Maastricht 2026 Puts Photography in the Spotlight, From Mapplethorpe to Antiquarian Maps
At the Maastricht Exhibition & Conference Centre (MECC), Tefaf Maastricht is keeping its familiar choreography: dealers on the fair’s plush ground floor, with the mezzanine reserved for museum partners, VIP lounges, and dining, including Michelin-starred seafood. But within that established architecture, the fair is quietly recalibrating what it wants to foreground.
One visible change is the placement of Showcase, the section dedicated to younger, emerging dealerships. After a more prominent position last year, Showcase has been moved to the back of the fair in this edition, a tweak that subtly reshapes how visitors encounter new galleries amid Tefaf’s famously blue-chip mix.
Photography, meanwhile, is being treated less as an accessory and more as a through line. Will Korner, Tefaf’s head of fairs, said the aim this year is to ensure the medium is “not just a bit part.” In the centrally positioned Focus section, which is dedicated to solo presentations, Korner points to works by American photographer Robert Mapplethorpe (1946–1989) shown with Galerie Thomas Schulte.
Another photography-led highlight comes via an unusual pairing: rare books dealer Daniel Crouch and photography specialist Michael Hoppen are sharing a stand that sets antiquarian maps against cityscapes by contemporary Japanese photographer Sohei Nishino (b. 1973), inviting visitors to read urban space through both historical cartography and contemporary image-making.
As ever, Tefaf’s range stretches far beyond the modern and contemporary. Among the announced highlights are objects that reach back more than 4,000 years. Dealer Gisèle Croës is presenting a Neolithic painted pottery jar from China, dated around 2200BC–2000BC, distinguished by a humanoid head that forms its handle; it is priced at £120,000. Charles Ede is bringing a wooden statuette of a male official from ancient Egypt’s Middle Kingdom (around 2055BC–1911BC), priced at €38,000.
Within the fair’s cohort of eight Ancient art specialists, London dealer David Aaron is showing a delicately carved, rare Greek tomb stele commemorating an unwed woman of marriageable age, alongside an Egyptian limestone baboon dated 664BC–343BC, priced at £280,000.
Jewelry also has its moment. Australian designer Margot McKinney returns after making her Tefaf debut last year with “Bloem,” a collier composed of eight tourmalines, including one weighing 68.85 carats. The piece has already entered the public imagination: it was worn by Helen Mirren when she received the Cecil B. DeMille Award at the Golden Globe Awards in January. The price is listed as “on application.”
For collectors drawn to the manuscript tradition, Basel-based Dr. Jörn Günther Rare Books is exhibiting the “St. Pantaleon Legendarium,” an early Cologne-produced vellum manuscript dated around 1140–80. The volume recounts the lives of 18 saints and includes a genealogical page of portraits that advances a striking claim: that Saint Servatius, Maastricht’s patron saint, was related to Jesus Christ through Mary’s aunt, Esmeria. The manuscript is priced at SFr1.6 million ($2.1 million).
Old Masters remain a gravitational center, particularly 17th-century Dutch painting. One of the most charged works on view is a recently restituted and rediscovered painting by Flemish artist Jacob Jordaens (1593–1678), presented for the first time by Belgian dealer Pelgrims de Bigard. “The Return of the Holy Family from Egypt” (around 1613) is one of three known versions by the artist. It was among the works taken by the Nazis in 1940 during the occupation of the Mechelen castle belonging to resistance fighter Joseph Scheppers de Bergstein, who later died in a concentration camp. The painting resurfaced in a cellar in Ardèche, France, in 2022 and was restituted soon after to the Scheppers de Bergstein heirs.
Dealer Cédric Pelgrims de Bigard said the family has decided to sell because “there are too many cousins.” He has not set a price, but said it will be below the €800,000 figure discussed at the time of restitution.
Pelgrims de Bigard is also bringing a finely worked grisaille by Dutch artist Adriaen van Salm (c. 1660–1720), depicting whaling ships trapped in drifting ice near Greenland. The dealer described the subject as one that “resonates strongly with current events,” adding, “It is quite rare for an Old Master work to connect to today’s news.” “Whalers in the Arctic” (around 1712–15) is priced around €300,000.
Taken together, the highlights sketch Tefaf’s enduring proposition: a fair where a Neolithic jar, a medieval legendarium, a restituted Jordaens, and contemporary photography can coexist — and where the most traditional categories are increasingly being asked to speak to the present.
