Where Artwork Goes To Die

Many of the world’s artworks – including some of the most famous, prized objects – are rarely seen. Instead of adorning the walls of homes or museums, they are lodged in giant underground crypts: storage facilities of various kinds, some of them tax havens called freeports.

Max Haiven takes us on a journey to the Singapore Freeport, a “luxury warehouse” behind razorwire that safeguards luxury clients’ art. But who are these clients, really? It’s hard to say, because besides protecting the artworks from damage, the freeport shields their owners from identification and taxation.

“While an investor might rent their own vault, it is more likely that they will subcontract the rental to a firm specializing in keeping an object safe, asking few, if any, questions. What is inside the crypt is anyone’s guess.”

Haiven describes the Singapore Freeport as another example of a spatial typology emerging throughout the world where the rich can sequester their wealth — in this case through objects of great cultural value. This is a fundamental driver of wildly increasing income stratification and class separation. He calls places like freeports “utopias for money.” A utopia where everything is privatized, including every last bit of culture.

At stake here is the power of extreme money to re-craft the world, to create a network of utopian “goodplaces/noplaces” hidden in plain sight.