The ‘Secret Museums’ Hiding Some of the World’s Greatest Art, Tax-Free

The oldest is larger than nine football fields and was used to distribute Red Cross parcels to prisoners of war across Europe during World War II. The newest demands a retina scan for entry. These are free ports: tax-free, high-tech storage facilities where top art collectors and nervous tycoons can park their valuables for decades. Artist Hito Steyerl has called them “secret museums.”

Some free ports are located near Geneva and the other historic playgrounds of monied Europe. Some have sprung up in Singapore and other Asian hubs, to serve more recently minted fortunes. The U.S. is a relative latecomer to the game, but there are now free ports in Manhattan and outside Wilmington, Del. Free ports are essentially miniature tax-free zones offering clients a legal way to avoid paying duplicate import duties. To take a hypothetical example, a wealthy collector who owns a $20 million Magritte might use the free port in Luxembourg to avoid paying hundreds of thousands of dollars in import duties while she decides whether to hang the painting in her chalet in the Swiss Alps or her Manhattan brownstone.