自由港 最大的无人参观的博物馆

The drab free port zone near the Geneva city center, a compound of blocky gray and vanilla warehouses surrounded by train tracks, roads and a barbed-wire fence, looks like the kind of place where beauty goes to die. But within its walls, crated or sealed cheek by jowl in cramped storage vaults, are more than a million of some of the most exquisite artworks ever made.

坐落在日内瓦市中心附近的自由港看上去非常朴素，是一处砖灰与乳白色的仓库建筑群，四周被铁轨、道路和铁丝网围绕着，看上去完全没有任何美好的迹象。但在这些建筑的围墙之内那些狭窄的储藏室里，一百多万件世上最精美的艺术品被密麻麻地打包装箱或密封着。

Treasures from the glory days of ancient Rome. Museum-quality paintings by old masters. An estimated 1,000 works by Picasso.

古罗马全盛时期的财富。馆藏级的早期绘画大师作品。大约1000多件毕加索(Picasso)作品。

As the price of art has skyrocketed — the value of some works has increased tenfold and more over the last decade — perhaps nothing illustrates the art-as-bullion approach to contemporary collecting habits more than the proliferation of warehouses like this one, where masterpieces are increasingly being tucked away by owners more interested in seeing them appreciate than hanging on walls.

过去十年里，随着艺术品的价格直线上升，有些作品的价值已经增加了十倍甚至更多——在当代收藏习惯中，艺术等同于金条，或许这些塞得满满的仓库就是最好的证明，在这里，愈来愈多的杰作是被那些期待它们升值，而不是愿意将它们挂在墙上欣赏的拥有者们塞进来的。

With their controlled climates, confidential record keeping and enormous potential for tax savings, free ports have become the parking lot of choice for high-net-worth buyers looking to round out investment portfolios with art.

自由港拥有恒温控制、严格的保密措施，以及巨大的避税潜力，因此成了旨在通过艺术收藏扩展投资组合的高资产净值买家存放艺术品的首选之地。

“For some collectors, art is being treated as a capital asset in their portfolio,” said Evan Beard, who advises clients on art and finance at U.S. Trust. “They are becoming more financially savvy, and free ports have become a pillar of all of this.”

“有些收藏家将艺术品视为投资组合中的一项资本资产，”在美国信托(U.S. Trust)为客户提供艺术与金融方面咨询的伊文·伯德(Evan Beard)说。“他们变得更有金融意识，自由港已成为这一切的支柱。”

The trend is prompting concerns about the use of these storage spaces for illegal activities. It is also causing worries within the art world about the effect such wholesale storage has on art itself. “Treating art as a commodity and just hiding it in storage is something that to me is not really moral,” said Eli Broad, a major contemporary art collector who last year opened his own Los Angeles museum.

这股风潮引发了对于使用这些存储空间进行不法活动的关注。它也造成了艺术界内部的忧虑，担心这种大批存储对艺术本身的影响。“把艺术视为商品，藏在仓库里，我觉得这并不道德，”重要的当代艺术收藏家伊利·布洛德(Eli Broad)说，他去年在洛杉矶开办了自己的博物馆。

Free ports originated in the 19th century for the temporary storage of goods like grain, tea and industrial goods. In the past few decades, however, a handful of them — including Geneva’s — have increasingly come to operate as storage lockers for the superrich. Located in tax-friendly countries and cities, free ports offer savings and security that collectors and dealers find almost irresistible. (Someone who buys a $50 million painting at auction in New York, for example, is staring at a $4.4 million sales tax bill. Ship it to a free port, and the bill disappears, at least until you decide to bring it back to New York.)

自由港起源于19世纪，用于临时储存谷物、茶叶和工业货物。然而在过去几十年里，包括日内瓦在内的若干自由港日益成为超级富豪的储物柜。它们坐落在低税率的国家和城市，既能省钱，又能保证安全，令收藏家和交易商们简直无法抗拒（比如，有人在纽约拍卖会上买下一幅5000万美元的油画，就要缴纳440万美元的营业税。如果把它运送到自由港，这笔费用就消失了，除非你想把它再次带回纽约）。

Many masterpieces have long lived outside of public view, buried in the basements of museums or tucked away in the private villas of the rich.

许多杰作已经长期淡出公众视野，被封存在博物馆的地下室，或收藏在某个富人的私家别墅之中。

But the free ports are drawing more criticism and concern, namely: Are they bad for art? Does the boxing up of millions of valuable works pervert the very essence of what art is supposed to do?

但是自由港却招来更多批评与关注：它们是不是对艺术有害？数百万价值连城的艺术品被这样装箱打包，是不是扭曲了艺术应有的本质？

Yes, say many in the art world. “Works of art are created to be viewed,” said the director of the Louvre, Jean-Luc Martinez, who described free ports as the greatest museums no one can see.

是的，世界上的许多人都这么说。“艺术作品被创造出来是为了观赏用的，”卢浮宫馆长让-卢克·马丁内斯(Jean-Luc Martinez)说。他说，自由港是最大的无人参观的博物馆。

Some see even higher stakes for contemporary works, as they can be whisked off, their paint hardly dry, before ever entering the public’s consciousness. Storage puts the art “intellectually almost in a coma,” said Joanne Heyler, the director of the Broad Museum.

有些人甚至把当代艺术作为更大的赌注，一旦它们完成，油彩刚刚干涸，还未受到公众注意的时候，就会被匆匆买下。储藏令这些艺术品“在学术层面几乎处于冻结状态，”布洛德艺术馆(Broad Museum)馆长乔安妮·海勒(Joanne Heyler)说。

Not everyone agrees, pointing out that there is plenty of art in the world for people to see and that much art was created as private property. “Paintings are not a public good,” said David Nash, a New York gallery owner.

并不是所有人都同意这个观点，有人指出，这个世界上，有很多艺术品可供人们观赏，并且有不少艺术品就是为了私人拥有而创作的。“绘画并不是一项公益事业，”纽约某画廊老板大卫·纳什(David Nash)说。

Even so, some collectors whose businesses have come to depend on free port storage are a bit sheepish. “It is a shame,” Helly Nahmad, a London dealer whose family is said to store 4,500 works in the Geneva Free Port, told The Art Newspaper in 2011. “It is like a composer making a piece of music, and no one listens to it.”

即便如此，有些依赖自由港储藏的收藏家们也觉得有点难为情。“很遗憾，”2011年，伦敦交易商赫利·纳马德(Helly Nahmad)在接受《艺术报》(The Art Newspaper)采访时说，据说他的家族在日内瓦自由港存放了4500件艺术品。“就像作曲家创作了音乐却没有人听一样。”

So just what works are locked away? Because most art is tucked into storage spaces quietly, it is difficult to know what is where at any given moment.

所以，被封存起来的究竟是哪些作品呢？因为大多数艺术品都被静静地塞在存储空间里，什么时间，在什么地方存着什么作品，总是很难为人知悉。

But assorted legal disputes, investigations and periodic exhibitions featuring stored works have provided glimpses of specific pieces lost from view.

但是各种各样的法律争端、调查和展览上不时出现的储存的作品，能让我们得以窥见这些远离公众视野的具体作品。

There are the rare Etruscan sarcophagi discovered in Geneva by Italian police two years ago, found among 45 crates of looted antiquities, some still wrapped in Italian newspapers from the 1970s.

两年前，意大利警方在日内瓦发现了珍稀的伊特鲁里亚石棺，它们是在45箱赃物古董中被发现的，其中有些还用20世纪70年代的意大利报纸包裹着。

And the $2 billion collection of the Russian billionaire Dmitry M. Rybolovlev, which includes a Rothko, a van Gogh, a Renoir, Klimt’s “Water Serpents II,” El Greco’s “Saint Sebastian,” Picasso’s “Les Noces de Pierrette” and Leonardo da Vinci’s “Christ as Salvator Mundi.”

还有俄罗斯亿万富翁德米特里·M·雷波诺列夫(Dmitry M. Rybolovlev)价值20亿美元的收藏，其中包括一幅罗斯科(Rothko)、一幅梵·高(van Gogh)、一幅雷诺阿(Renoir)，以及克里姆特(Klimt)的《水蛇II》(Water Serpents II)、埃尔·格列柯(El Greco)的《圣徒塞巴斯蒂安》(Saint Sebastian)、毕加索的《亚威农少女》(Les Noces de Pierrette)和雷奥纳多·达·芬奇(Leonardo da Vinci)的《救世主基督》(Christ as Salvator Mundi)。

Despite enhanced Swiss efforts to track inventory and ownership, the free ports there remain an opaque preserve (though more transparent these days than counterparts in places like Singapore), filled with objects whose ownership can be confoundingly convoluted.

尽管瑞士采取进一步行动，对存货清单和所有权进行追溯，这里的自由港仍然是一处不透明的保留地（尽管近日来比新加坡的类似自由港透明了许多），充满各种所有权复杂难解的物品。

Case in point: $28 million worth of works by Andy Warhol, Jeff Koons, Joan Miró and others now stored in the Geneva Freeport. Equalia, a company registered by Mossack Fonseca (the law firm at the center of the Panama Papers controversy about how the wealthy conceal their riches), stored the works on behalf of a diamond broker, Erez Daleyot, in 2009. Once in storage, the art was used as collateral for debts Daleyot owed to a Belgian bank, according to court papers. Now a man named Leon Templesman, president of a New York diamond manufacturing company, Lazare Kaplan International, is trying to seize the art as part of a dispute with Daleyot and the bank.

例如：如今日内瓦自由港储存有一批价值在2800万美元的艺术品，包括安迪·沃霍尔(Andy Warhol)、杰夫·昆斯(Jeff Koons)、胡安·米罗(Joan Miró)等艺术家的作品。它们是2009年，在莫萨克-冯塞卡(Mossack Fonseca)律所（即关于富人隐匿财产的巴拿马文件争议事件中的核心律所）名下注册的Equalia公司代表钻石交易商埃雷兹·德雷约特(Erez Daleyot)储存的。根据法庭文件，被储存时，这些艺术品被用作德雷约特欠一家比利时银行债务的抵押品。现在，纽约钻石制造公司拉扎里·卡普兰国际(Lazare Kaplan International)的总裁里昂·谭博斯曼(Leon Templesman)试图获取这批艺术品，作为解决德雷约特与该银行纠纷的一部分。

Templesman said the free port’s embrace of confidentiality made such seizures more complicated. The bank, KBC, said it had kept the art in the free port “out of precaution” and that it could not comment further on a matter involving one of its clients.

谭博斯曼说，自由港的严格保密制度令这类抵押变得更加复杂。涉及此事的KBC银行说，它将这批艺术品存放在自由港是“预防措施”，并且不愿意进一步评价一桩涉及自己客户的问题。

David Hiler, president of the Geneva Free Port, said that as a result of the audit, the Swiss were working to address concerns about lack of transparency. Come September, he said, all storage contracts will require that clients allow additional inspections of any archaeological artifacts they want stored there.

日内瓦自由港主席大卫·希勒(David Hiler)说，作为一项审计工作的结果，瑞士正在努力解决缺乏透明度的问题。他说，今年9月，所有存储合同都需要客户允许对希望存储的考古物品进行附加检查。

Collectors and dealers choose to store art in the free ports for more pedestrian reasons than tax avoidance. Some simply have no more room in their homes, said Georgina Hepburne Scott, who advises collectors. And in a free port, their property is protected in climate-controlled environments, often under video surveillance and behind fire-resistant walls.

除了避税之外，选择在自由港存储物品的收藏家和交易商还有更多普通的理由。有些人只是因为家里没有更多空地方了，收藏家顾问乔治娜·赫伯恩·斯科特(Georgina Hepburne Scott)说。自由港里，他们的物品可以在恒温环境下保存，通常还有录像监控和防火墙的保护。

“When it is brought to light, the work is preserved; it’s not been hanging above a smoky fireplace,” she said.

“一旦有重见天日之时，这件作品会被保存得非常好；而不是常年被挂在烟熏火燎的壁炉上面，”她说。

Some warehouses also have viewing rooms where collectors can review their art and show it to potential buyers. This year, after voters in Geneva rejected a plan to expand the major art museum, a Swiss lawyer, Christophe Germann, wrote a newspaper column advocating wholesale sharing, arguing that free ports be forced to open their doors to let people see public displays of the private collections, a worthy trade-off for the tax benefits collectors receive.

有些仓库还设有浏览室，收藏者可以在这里浏览自己的艺术品，并向潜在买家展示。今年，日内瓦的选民否决了一项扩建该市主要美术馆的计划，瑞士律师克里斯托弗·格曼恩(Christophe Germann)在报纸专栏撰文，主张分享这些大批藏品，认为自由港应当被迫打开大门，公开展示私家收藏，供人们观赏，对于那些享受了避税好处的收藏家们来说，这样的交易是值得的。