6 ms·

The Geneva Free Port is crammed with storage vaults that contain great art

67 points by bootload 10y ago

lolc 10y ago
A friend works on deciphering an old script based on very few samples. When he inquired about a piece he learned that more of those with similar inscriptions, presumably from illegal excavations, are stored in Geneva. Luckily he was granted access to have a look at them, I assume that the owners like researchers to validate their stuff, because they are suspected forgeries. We don't really know how many more samples of that script are tucked away in vaults. In that context in don't care about a 1000 Picasso paintings. I would love for people to go crazy about the paintings, so long as they leave the truly old pieces to the researchers and in the ground until they can be excavated properly.
- return0 10y ago
  That's the worst part about it. I believe art older than a reasonable number of centuries (e.g 300 years) should not be tradeable. What's the moral argument for allowing it?
  - lolc 10y ago
    Agreed. The only reason I can sort of accept is that making trade illegal would cause some items to be hidden completely. (Which is not a moral reason to accept trade.)
  - iwwr 10y ago
    Private property? If you were to implement such a measure, it further encourages black markets, since the demand will still be there. A bad consequence can even be the destruction of art from either: hiding a crime or harder access to legitimate researchers and restorers. Besides, not everything old is necessarily worth preserving. You don't always need a physical object, you can take high-res scans or pictures. Many pieces of privately-owned art are actually on long-term loans to museums. Public museums usually have far larger stockpiles of objects than can reasonably be displayed. Many languish in storage for decades at a time. In private ownership they can at least be displayed and taken care of.
    - jonknee 10y ago
      Private ownership of antiquity is definitely murky. If you can prove legitimate ownership for an object that is one thing, all of a sudden owning an ancient treasure is another. I think they should belong to the state in question (e.g. the people from that area).
      - chris_va 10y ago
        Where do you draw the line? In the US we always side with personal freedom in the courts (e.g. if you want to own something, you can do so, pursuit of happiness and all that). Antiquities don't have a lot of intrinsic value beyond display, so eventually (maybe 50 years, maybe 200 years) they will all end up in a museum. Generally they have higher value to people in the area from which they originated, so they will eventually migrate home. I'd prefer to be patient and let it happen naturally instead of implementing new laws.
        return0 10y ago
        Why would they migrate home? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elgin_Marbles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elgin_Marbles
        chris_va 10y ago
        40% in favour of returning the marbles to Greece 15% in favour of keeping them at the British Museum 18% would not vote 27% had no opinion ... I feel like this is a good example of where they will eventually migrate home. It hasn't been very long, on an antiquities scale.
  - GunboatDiplomat 10y ago
    What's the moral argument for NOT allowing it? The default is allowed, not disallowed.
    - return0 10y ago
      That it was illegally obtained. (could the first seller of the sarcophagus legally prove they owned it?)
      - Shivetya 10y ago
        this parallels the copyright laws many of us just hate that it is frightening. the best solution that honors private property rights is to make part of the requirement of long term storage sites like this is to present high resolution scans of the artwork that would be freely available. Some bemoan all this art being locked up out of private view, yet many government managed museums and the like are just as bad if not worse as I doubt an investor would let their collections suffer from neglect.
      - GunboatDiplomat 10y ago
        That may apply to sarcophagi from ancient Egypt, but certainly does not apply to all artworks over 300 years old.
WalterBright 10y ago
The art world is plagued with forgeries, some so good that nobody can prove or disprove authenticity. After all, with prices so high, there's every incentive to create very good forgeries. Which raises the question - if one cannot discern a difference, is there a difference? And if there is no difference, why pay those fantastic prices? I wonder when the modern "tulip" madness will come crashing down. I wouldn't mind decorating my house with cheap forgeries that are so good one cannot tell with the unaided eye.
- danieltillett 10y ago
  There is a village in China that will make a copy of any artwork for you. I have to say that good forgeries are just as collectable as the real thing :)
- B1FF_PSUVM 10y ago
  > I wonder when the modern "tulip" madness will come crashing down. Probably won't. Artworks with provenance are like bitcoin 'avant la lettre' - pointlessly expensive manufactured things in limited supply which are trackable/traceable to a certain point (not too much, not too little ...) "How convenient!"
- wodenokoto 10y ago
  Because art is not decoration, it is history. So what if the Incan built a gold statue? We can built them much better today!
jkot 10y ago
I think this tone "art was created to be viewed" sort of hurts. Painting deteriorates over time when exposed to light and normal air. Also there is a not much difference between painting located in some container, and museum in prohibitively expensive New York. Rather than advocating against "evil superrich" we should focus on digitization. It should be a law that any piece sold, insured or stored has to digitized in high resolution.
- MichaelBurge 10y ago
  The last thing we need is more precedent for government agents entitling themselves to people's private property. You might as well be demanding that every programmer give the government a copy of their source code, in case you die or your company goes bankrupt and people get curious about what you were working on.
  - return0 10y ago
    But what if the ancient romans had GNUed code, and you discovered it 1000 years later, and kept it to yourself? Governments already demand that you give up your intellectual property after a number of years, yet the same concept hasn't been applied to physical property yet.
    - MichaelBurge 10y ago
      That's a really good question. I guess code specifically wouldn't be copyrighted after that time and wouldn't have any value in its physical format. I'm also not sure how hard it is to track property ownership over 1000 years, or if it applies between governments. Ancient artifacts whose ownership is in question could be legislated to not transfer ownership to the discoverer; that's not really burdensome. There's also laws regarding abandoned property. If e.g. Stallman was buried with printouts of emacs and a tomb robber steals the copy, the entire chain of transactions is tainted from that point on. But as painful as it would be to lose it, if you had verifiable proof that the documents the code is printed on were legally yours, you shouldn't be obligated by outside parties to handle them in any particular way.
tehrei 10y ago
If someone bombs the free port and destroys all works held within, will this result in said rich people eating dirt, or will it just bankrupt the insurance companies?
WalterBright 10y ago
> 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. I guess we know what people will be doing for money when jobs are gone due to automation.
danieltillett 10y ago
I liked the suggestion that they had to open up the warehouses for the public if they want to keep their tax free status. To have so much great art locked up for tax avoidance reasons is not ideal.
henvic 10y ago
Blame the taxes for that. They should keep helping people avoid taxes as this is the right thing to do. Tax is unethical by its very nature (it is theft, regardless of justifications). That said, they could very well facilitate a tax-free art gallery environment trying to build mecas of fine art galleries.
- brador 10y ago
  Tax keeps your property protected. Don't like tax then you lose the military and police protection for your right to property. No one survives long under natural law.
- dang 10y ago
  We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11795373 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11795373 and marked it off-topic.
  - golergka 10y ago
    You may disagree with this comment, but how is that off-topic?
    - dang 10y ago
      Taxation-is-theft is the quintessence of the generic ideological tangent. Those are off topic on HN.
      - golergka 10y ago
        Really? Because I see debates about taxation and politics in general all the time in the comments - especially when these themes are directly related to the posts. Seriously, how can you say that comments about taxation are off-topic while this article is not off-topic and is currently on the front page? You can't really have a conversation about poverty, welfare and related policies without talking about taxation, and it's a weird moderatorial distinction.
  - deleted 10y ago
Hermel 10y ago
Can anyone explain how this works from a tax perspective? As far as I know, goods in free ports are basically "in transit between two countries" for tax purposes. I.e. they left their origin, but have not entered their destination yet. I can see how that temporarily avoids sales tax (or VAT). That's also the tax mentioned in the newspaper. However, as soon as you bring that artwork to its destination, you have to pay that tax. And by that time, it will probably be much higher than now. First, the tax will most likely have increased (VAT rates never seem to go down). Second, the art will have appreciated in value, increasing the taxes due on import even more. All that considered, this does not seem like a very good strategy to me, at least tax-wise.
- fludlight 10y ago
  "Temporarily" in this case can mean decades, by the end of which inflation and time value of money can considerably erode your multi million dollar sales tax bill. As an added bonus you can get a loan on your painting while it's in the warehouse because lenders can limit your access, thereby ensuring that you neither damage the collateral nor move it beyond their reach.
  - Hermel 10y ago
    > inflation and time value of money can considerably erode your multi million dollar sales tax bill No, when importing the piece of art to its destination, VAT tax apply on its current value at the current VAT rate. So the opposite happens. Instead of eroding over time, the tax bill gets larger as tax rates are likely to climb and the value increase. However, a good reason to do so is if your liquidity is limited. For example, if you e.g. as a German inherited a 100 million EUR piece of art stored in a free port today, bringing it to Germany would cost you 19 million in VAT. Assuming that you don't have that much cash laying around, you would face the choice of selling it or just keeping it there for a few more years.
    - danmaz74 10y ago
      But how can you estimate the "current value" for a unique piece of art?

67 points by bootload 10y ago

lolc 10y ago

A friend works on deciphering an old script based on very few samples. When he inquired about a piece he learned that more of those with similar inscriptions, presumably from illegal excavations, are stored in Geneva. Luckily he was granted access to have a look at them, I assume that the owners like researchers to validate their stuff, because they are suspected forgeries. We don't really know how many more samples of that script are tucked away in vaults. In that context in don't care about a 1000 Picasso paintings. I would love for people to go crazy about the paintings, so long as they leave the truly old pieces to the researchers and in the ground until they can be excavated properly.

return0 10y ago
That's the worst part about it. I believe art older than a reasonable number of centuries (e.g 300 years) should not be tradeable. What's the moral argument for allowing it?
- lolc 10y ago
  Agreed. The only reason I can sort of accept is that making trade illegal would cause some items to be hidden completely. (Which is not a moral reason to accept trade.)
- iwwr 10y ago
  Private property? If you were to implement such a measure, it further encourages black markets, since the demand will still be there. A bad consequence can even be the destruction of art from either: hiding a crime or harder access to legitimate researchers and restorers. Besides, not everything old is necessarily worth preserving. You don't always need a physical object, you can take high-res scans or pictures. Many pieces of privately-owned art are actually on long-term loans to museums. Public museums usually have far larger stockpiles of objects than can reasonably be displayed. Many languish in storage for decades at a time. In private ownership they can at least be displayed and taken care of.
  - jonknee 10y ago
    Private ownership of antiquity is definitely murky. If you can prove legitimate ownership for an object that is one thing, all of a sudden owning an ancient treasure is another. I think they should belong to the state in question (e.g. the people from that area).
    - chris_va 10y ago
      Where do you draw the line? In the US we always side with personal freedom in the courts (e.g. if you want to own something, you can do so, pursuit of happiness and all that). Antiquities don't have a lot of intrinsic value beyond display, so eventually (maybe 50 years, maybe 200 years) they will all end up in a museum. Generally they have higher value to people in the area from which they originated, so they will eventually migrate home. I'd prefer to be patient and let it happen naturally instead of implementing new laws.
      - return0 10y ago
        Why would they migrate home? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elgin_Marbles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elgin_Marbles
        chris_va 10y ago
        40% in favour of returning the marbles to Greece 15% in favour of keeping them at the British Museum 18% would not vote 27% had no opinion ... I feel like this is a good example of where they will eventually migrate home. It hasn't been very long, on an antiquities scale.
- GunboatDiplomat 10y ago
  What's the moral argument for NOT allowing it? The default is allowed, not disallowed.
  - return0 10y ago
    That it was illegally obtained. (could the first seller of the sarcophagus legally prove they owned it?)
    - Shivetya 10y ago
      this parallels the copyright laws many of us just hate that it is frightening. the best solution that honors private property rights is to make part of the requirement of long term storage sites like this is to present high resolution scans of the artwork that would be freely available. Some bemoan all this art being locked up out of private view, yet many government managed museums and the like are just as bad if not worse as I doubt an investor would let their collections suffer from neglect.
    - GunboatDiplomat 10y ago
      That may apply to sarcophagi from ancient Egypt, but certainly does not apply to all artworks over 300 years old.

WalterBright 10y ago

The art world is plagued with forgeries, some so good that nobody can prove or disprove authenticity. After all, with prices so high, there's every incentive to create very good forgeries. Which raises the question - if one cannot discern a difference, is there a difference? And if there is no difference, why pay those fantastic prices? I wonder when the modern "tulip" madness will come crashing down. I wouldn't mind decorating my house with cheap forgeries that are so good one cannot tell with the unaided eye.

danieltillett 10y ago
There is a village in China that will make a copy of any artwork for you. I have to say that good forgeries are just as collectable as the real thing :)
B1FF_PSUVM 10y ago
> I wonder when the modern "tulip" madness will come crashing down. Probably won't. Artworks with provenance are like bitcoin 'avant la lettre' - pointlessly expensive manufactured things in limited supply which are trackable/traceable to a certain point (not too much, not too little ...) "How convenient!"
wodenokoto 10y ago
Because art is not decoration, it is history. So what if the Incan built a gold statue? We can built them much better today!

jkot 10y ago

I think this tone "art was created to be viewed" sort of hurts. Painting deteriorates over time when exposed to light and normal air. Also there is a not much difference between painting located in some container, and museum in prohibitively expensive New York. Rather than advocating against "evil superrich" we should focus on digitization. It should be a law that any piece sold, insured or stored has to digitized in high resolution.

MichaelBurge 10y ago
The last thing we need is more precedent for government agents entitling themselves to people's private property. You might as well be demanding that every programmer give the government a copy of their source code, in case you die or your company goes bankrupt and people get curious about what you were working on.
- return0 10y ago
  But what if the ancient romans had GNUed code, and you discovered it 1000 years later, and kept it to yourself? Governments already demand that you give up your intellectual property after a number of years, yet the same concept hasn't been applied to physical property yet.
  - MichaelBurge 10y ago
    That's a really good question. I guess code specifically wouldn't be copyrighted after that time and wouldn't have any value in its physical format. I'm also not sure how hard it is to track property ownership over 1000 years, or if it applies between governments. Ancient artifacts whose ownership is in question could be legislated to not transfer ownership to the discoverer; that's not really burdensome. There's also laws regarding abandoned property. If e.g. Stallman was buried with printouts of emacs and a tomb robber steals the copy, the entire chain of transactions is tainted from that point on. But as painful as it would be to lose it, if you had verifiable proof that the documents the code is printed on were legally yours, you shouldn't be obligated by outside parties to handle them in any particular way.

tehrei 10y ago

If someone bombs the free port and destroys all works held within, will this result in said rich people eating dirt, or will it just bankrupt the insurance companies?

WalterBright 10y ago

> 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. I guess we know what people will be doing for money when jobs are gone due to automation.

danieltillett 10y ago

I liked the suggestion that they had to open up the warehouses for the public if they want to keep their tax free status. To have so much great art locked up for tax avoidance reasons is not ideal.

henvic 10y ago

Blame the taxes for that. They should keep helping people avoid taxes as this is the right thing to do. Tax is unethical by its very nature (it is theft, regardless of justifications). That said, they could very well facilitate a tax-free art gallery environment trying to build mecas of fine art galleries.

brador 10y ago
Tax keeps your property protected. Don't like tax then you lose the military and police protection for your right to property. No one survives long under natural law.
dang 10y ago
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11795373 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11795373 and marked it off-topic.
- golergka 10y ago
  You may disagree with this comment, but how is that off-topic?
  - dang 10y ago
    Taxation-is-theft is the quintessence of the generic ideological tangent. Those are off topic on HN.
    - golergka 10y ago
      Really? Because I see debates about taxation and politics in general all the time in the comments - especially when these themes are directly related to the posts. Seriously, how can you say that comments about taxation are off-topic while this article is not off-topic and is currently on the front page? You can't really have a conversation about poverty, welfare and related policies without talking about taxation, and it's a weird moderatorial distinction.
- deleted 10y ago

Hermel 10y ago

Can anyone explain how this works from a tax perspective? As far as I know, goods in free ports are basically "in transit between two countries" for tax purposes. I.e. they left their origin, but have not entered their destination yet. I can see how that temporarily avoids sales tax (or VAT). That's also the tax mentioned in the newspaper. However, as soon as you bring that artwork to its destination, you have to pay that tax. And by that time, it will probably be much higher than now. First, the tax will most likely have increased (VAT rates never seem to go down). Second, the art will have appreciated in value, increasing the taxes due on import even more. All that considered, this does not seem like a very good strategy to me, at least tax-wise.

fludlight 10y ago
"Temporarily" in this case can mean decades, by the end of which inflation and time value of money can considerably erode your multi million dollar sales tax bill. As an added bonus you can get a loan on your painting while it's in the warehouse because lenders can limit your access, thereby ensuring that you neither damage the collateral nor move it beyond their reach.
- Hermel 10y ago
  > inflation and time value of money can considerably erode your multi million dollar sales tax bill No, when importing the piece of art to its destination, VAT tax apply on its current value at the current VAT rate. So the opposite happens. Instead of eroding over time, the tax bill gets larger as tax rates are likely to climb and the value increase. However, a good reason to do so is if your liquidity is limited. For example, if you e.g. as a German inherited a 100 million EUR piece of art stored in a free port today, bringing it to Germany would cost you 19 million in VAT. Assuming that you don't have that much cash laying around, you would face the choice of selling it or just keeping it there for a few more years.
  - danmaz74 10y ago
    But how can you estimate the "current value" for a unique piece of art?