自由港 最大的無人蔘觀的博物館
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.
坐落在日內瓦市中心附近的自由港看上去非常樸素，是一處磚灰與乳白色的倉庫建築羣，四周被鐵軌、道路和鐵絲網圍繞着，看上去完全沒有任何美好的跡象。但在這些建築的圍牆之內那些狹窄的儲藏室裏，一百多萬件世上最精美的藝術品被密麻麻地打包裝箱或密封着。
Treasures from the glory days of ancient Rome. Museum-quality paintings by old masters. An estimated 1,000 works by Picasso.
古羅馬全盛時期的財富。館藏級的早期繪畫大師作品。大約1000多件畢加索(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.
過去十年裏，隨着藝術品的價格直線上升，有些作品的價值已經增加了十倍甚至更多——在當代收藏習慣中，藝術等同於金條，或許這些塞得滿滿的倉庫就是最好的證明，在這裏，愈來愈多的傑作是被那些期待它們升值，而不是願意將它們掛在牆上欣賞的擁有者們塞進來的。
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.
自由港擁有恆溫控制、嚴格的保密措施，以及巨大的避稅潛力，因此成了旨在通過藝術收藏擴展投資組合的高資產淨值買家存放藝術品的首選之地。
“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.”
“有些收藏家將藝術品視爲投資組合中的一項資本資產，”在美國信託(U.S. Trust)爲客戶提供藝術與金融方面諮詢的伊文·伯德(Evan Beard)說。“他們變得更有金融意識，自由港已成爲這一切的支柱。”
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.
這股風潮引發了對於使用這些存儲空間進行不法活動的關注。它也造成了藝術界內部的憂慮，擔心這種大批存儲對藝術本身的影響。“把藝術視爲商品，藏在倉庫裏，我覺得這並不道德，”重要的當代藝術收藏家伊利·布洛德(Eli Broad)說，他去年在洛杉磯開辦了自己的博物館。
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.)
自由港起源於19世紀，用於臨時儲存穀物、茶葉和工業貨物。然而在過去幾十年裏，包括日內瓦在內的若干自由港日益成爲超級富豪的儲物櫃。它們坐落在低稅率的國家和城市，既能省錢，又能保證安全，令收藏家和交易商們簡直無法抗拒（比如，有人在紐約拍賣會上買下一幅5000萬美元的油畫，就要繳納440萬美元的營業稅。如果把它運送到自由港，這筆費用就消失了，除非你想把它再次帶回紐約）。
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.
許多傑作已經長期淡出公衆視野，被封存在博物館的地下室，或收藏在某個富人的私家別墅之中。
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?
但是自由港卻招來更多批評與關注：它們是不是對藝術有害？數百萬價值連城的藝術品被這樣裝箱打包，是不是扭曲了藝術應有的本質？
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，世界上的許多人都這麼說。“藝術作品被創造出來是爲了觀賞用的，”盧浮宮館長讓-盧克·馬丁內斯(Jean-Luc Martinez)說。他說，自由港是最大的無人蔘觀的博物館。
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.
有些人甚至把當代藝術作爲更大的賭注，一旦它們完成，油彩剛剛乾涸，還未受到公衆注意的時候，就會被匆匆買下。儲藏令這些藝術品“在學術層面幾乎處於凍結狀態，”布洛德藝術館(Broad Museum)館長喬安妮·海勒(Joanne Heyler)說。
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.
並不是所有人都同意這個觀點，有人指出，這個世界上，有很多藝術品可供人們觀賞，並且有不少藝術品就是爲了私人擁有而創作的。“繪畫並不是一項公益事業，”紐約某畫廊老闆大衛·納什(David Nash)說。
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，有些依賴自由港儲藏的收藏家們也覺得有點難爲情。“很遺憾，”2011年，倫敦交易商赫利·納馬德(Helly Nahmad)在接受《藝術報》(The Art Newspaper)採訪時說，據說他的家族在日內瓦自由港存放了4500件藝術品。“就像作曲家創作了音樂卻沒有人聽一樣。”
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，被封存起來的究竟是哪些作品呢？因爲大多數藝術品都被靜靜地塞在存儲空間裏，什麼時間，在什麼地方存着什麼作品，總是很難爲人知悉。
But assorted legal disputes, investigations and periodic exhibitions featuring stored works have provided glimpses of specific pieces lost from view.
但是各種各樣的法律爭端、調查和展覽上不時出現的儲存的作品，能讓我們得以窺見這些遠離公衆視野的具體作品。
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.
兩年前，意大利警方在日內瓦發現了珍稀的伊特魯里亞石棺，它們是在45箱贓物古董中被發現的，其中有些還用20世紀70年代的意大利報紙包裹着。
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.”
還有俄羅斯億萬富翁德米特里·M·雷波諾列夫(Dmitry M. Rybolovlev)價值20億美元的收藏，其中包括一幅羅斯科(Rothko)、一幅梵·高(van Gogh)、一幅雷諾阿(Renoir)，以及克里姆特(Klimt)的《水蛇II》(Water Serpents II)、埃爾·格列柯(El Greco)的《聖徒塞巴斯蒂安》(Saint Sebastian)、畢加索的《亞威農少女》(Les Noces de Pierrette)和雷奧納多·達·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.
儘管瑞士採取進一步行動，對存貨清單和所有權進行追溯，這裏的自由港仍然是一處不透明的保留地（儘管近日來比新加坡的類似自由港透明瞭許多），充滿各種所有權複雜難解的物品。
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：如今日內瓦自由港儲存有一批價值在2800萬美元的藝術品，包括安迪·沃霍爾(Andy Warhol)、傑夫·昆斯(Jeff Koons)、胡安·米羅(Joan Miró)等藝術家的作品。它們是2009年，在莫薩克-馮塞卡(Mossack Fonseca)律所（即關於富人隱匿財產的巴拿馬文件爭議事件中的核心律所）名下注冊的Equalia公司代表鑽石交易商埃雷茲·德雷約特(Erez Daleyot)儲存的。根據法庭文件，被儲存時，這些藝術品被用作德雷約特欠一家比利時銀行債務的抵押品。現在，紐約鑽石製造公司拉扎裏·卡普蘭國際(Lazare Kaplan International)的總裁里昂·譚博斯曼(Leon Templesman)試圖獲取這批藝術品，作爲解決德雷約特與該銀行糾紛的一部分。
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.
譚博斯曼說，自由港的嚴格保密制度令這類抵押變得更加複雜。涉及此事的KBC銀行說，它將這批藝術品存放在自由港是“預防措施”，並且不願意進一步評價一樁涉及自己客戶的問題。
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.
日內瓦自由港主席大衛·希勒(David Hiler)說，作爲一項審計工作的結果，瑞士正在努力解決缺乏透明度的問題。他說，今年9月，所有存儲合同都需要客戶允許對希望存儲的考古物品進行附加檢查。
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.
除了避稅之外，選擇在自由港存儲物品的收藏家和交易商還有更多普通的理由。有些人只是因爲家裏沒有更多空地方了，收藏家顧問喬治娜·赫伯恩·斯科特(Georgina Hepburne Scott)說。自由港裏，他們的物品可以在恆溫環境下保存，通常還有錄像監控和防火牆的保護。
“When it is brought to light, the work is preserved; it’s not been hanging above a smoky fireplace,” she said.
“一旦有重見天日之時，這件作品會被保存得非常好；而不是常年被掛在煙熏火燎的壁爐上面，”她說。
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.
有些倉庫還設有瀏覽室，收藏者可以在這裏瀏覽自己的藝術品，並向潛在買家展示。今年，日內瓦的選民否決了一項擴建該市主要美術館的計劃，瑞士律師克里斯托弗·格曼恩(Christophe Germann)在報紙專欄撰文，主張分享這些大批藏品，認爲自由港應當被迫打開大門，公開展示私家收藏，供人們觀賞，對於那些享受了避稅好處的收藏家們來說，這樣的交易是值得的。
