The talk of TEFAF, so far, are a pearl-dropping neoclassical clock, a $25 million Giacometti sculpture, and the new works on paper section including such gems as Gainsborough drawings and Irving Penn photographs. Opening night, some collectors grumbled that there were no big-ticket paintings (ie., $30 million Rembrandts) for sale, even while brand names from Botticelli to Gauguin, culled from private collections and priced in the tens of millions, are offered.

TEFAF is on through March 21 in the Dutch city of Maastricht.

Twenty years ago this week, 13 major artworks by Vermeer, Rembrandt, Degas, Manet, and others were swiped from Boston's Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum. The world's biggest art heist still baffles investigators who have tracked countless leads with no viable leads.

A $5 million reward is offered for the recovery of all, or any, of the $500 million worth of stolen art. The paintings are not salable, too well-known to be sold even on the underground.

Even Myles Connor, the convicted art thief who has long boasted of knowing who did it, has come up empty-handed. Connor, and others, have been given immunity if they help find the paintings. The actual thieves would not be given any reward.

In 1969, Mark Forgy was a young, backpacking Minnesotan in Europe when he met a debonair Hungarian who happenend to be one of the world's most notorious art forgers. Elmyr de Hory was a master faker of Picasso, Renoir, Matisse, and especially Modigliani.

Before he was caught, de Hory let loose his bogus oils and drawings on the post-WWII art market.

The forger and the starry-eyed kid partied in Ibiza for seven years, until de Hory, facing extradition to France for his crimes, commited suicide in 1976.

Forty years later, Forgy is writing a memoir of his experience and the Hillstrom Museum of Art at Gustavus Adolphus College in Minnesota has opened an exhibit of about 70 pieces (forgeries) by De Hory, plus a real Matisse and Modigliani. The show is on view through April 18.

For serious collectors of Chinese export porcelain, TEFAF, the Maastricht art fair going on now through March 21, has some choice examples for sale.

Highlights offered by Cohen & Cohen Gallery (Booth 246) include a striking pair of three foot tall Famille Rose Baluster vases and covers that depict scenes from the Romance of the Western Chamber, circa 1730, and a Rare Qianlong Famille Rose Wall Sconce, after a design by Cornelis Pronk.

Speaking of Chinese export's enduring popularity, Michael Cohen says, "No other porcelain offers the immediacy of appeal, vibrancy of color, quality of painting and originality of design."

Gainsborough, Rembrandt, and Canaletto are a few of the European masters on loan from London's Dulwich Picture Gallery to New York's Frick Collection. View treasures such as the 1771-72 portrait of the lovely Linley sisters, before scandal and tragedy marred their lives, expertly captured by Gainsborough.

The exhibition runs in the Oval Room and Garden Court through May 30.

Former corporate raider turned art dealer, Asher Edelman, has been sued by Emigrant Bank for more than $3.1 million after allegedly defaulting on some loans, including one to buy "Torse de Femme" by Alberto Giacometti.

Edelman, who runs a modern art gallery on the Upper East Side, said in an interview that "they will have full paymnet of the loan shortly."

The U.S. Postal Service is printing 3 million sheets of stamps featuring bold works by 10 American artists of the mid-20th century. The 44-cent commemoratives showcase Hans Hoffman, Mark Rothko, Robert Motherwell, Jackson Pollock, Joan Mitchell, Arshile Gorky, Willem de Kooning, Clyford Still, Barnett Newman and Adolph Gottlieb.

The Philadelphia Museum of Art is suing AXA Art Insurance for not honoring a $1.5 million claim for two paintings consigned by the museum to a bankrupt New York art dealer. "The Harbor" by Maurice Prendergast and "Mountain Landscape" by Arthur B. Davies were given to Lawrence Salander, of Salander-O'Reilly Galleries, to sell in 2006.

Salander was charged with 100 counts of fraud last year, with damages estimated at more than $90 million. Reportedly, Salander sold the Prendergast alone for $1.5 million in 2007, but the museum never received the proceeds. The Davies is missing.

The Art Newspaper's Martin Bailey delves into the story of a set of plasters, uncovered in France, with a possible link to Degas. If the attribution rings true, this cache could represent one of the greatest of recent art finds. The unauthenticated plasters have already been cast as 29 sets of bronzes, valued at a total of more than $500 million...