What is the afterlife of the work of art? After the creation of the work, it appears briefly in the public opinion, if lucky, can be obtained elsewhere and displayed again. But if the work is valuable enough, its fate is often more static: shortly after creation (in the case of contemporary art) or for sale (in the case of works of a deceased artist), a painting or sculpture may be sealed in a crate and commissioned for long-term storage to disappear for several years, even for several years, from vision. Therefore, in addition to the art market, the art storage industry is acquiring items that are not only in the United States, but also around the world that more and more people and even institutions no longer have space.
Thomas Burns, chief operating officer of art storage company Fortress Storage, told Observer that the length of time of artwork varies greatly in crates at storage facilities. Shorter leases are often for “transitional periods in life; people move, die, divorce” clients, need a place to put things until life settles. Other art investors “hope to increase value in the next few years” and sit them in crates until that time arrives. Some people place artworks in Freeports (stock-free storage sites in the United States and elsewhere), allowing buyers to avoid sales and use of taxes and tariffs.
The two biggest players in the fine art storage industry are UOVO, which launched in 2014 and covers a 280,000-square-foot location in Long Island City, now operates 30 locations nationwide for a total of 1.5 million square feet, and Crozier has 2 million square feet of storage space in 40 locations worldwide.
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They provide solutions for a world where there are too many, starting with artists working on a larger scale to align with the needs of international art fairs, which are even more demanding. These larger works of art require commercial galleries to maintain the expansive showrooms for temporary exhibitions. After the show, “the dealer must store it, and then sell it to the collectors who must store it, and then donate it to the museums where it must store it.”
Museums, foundations, gallery owners and private collectors are the main clients of these facilities. Collectors make up most of the art storage customers, but museums offer the most items to store. It is worth noting that the demand for storage is a broader cultural phenomenon, where art storage is just a segment. Currently, there are more than 52,000 self-storage facilities in the United States, with the rapid pace of new openings rising, from an average of 439 per year between 2010 and 2019 to 735 per year between 2010 and 2023.
Art storage facilities are different from your local storage lockers, the first is that they only accept objects of long-term value. “We don’t allow other types of things like mattresses,” Nir Eshed, head of contemporary operations at Mana, told Observer. “They may carry bed bugs and cockroaches,” which can invade the entire facility. $30 to $60 per square foot (mana of the fee) charges customers for storage units – anyway, buying a new mattress may be cheap.
Cost is another difference. According to the Journal of Consumer Research, the average monthly cost of a standard commercial five by five feet self-storage unit is $90. In Fortress storage, the lowest price vault is 16 square feet and costs $250 per month. At the high end, the fort charges up to $10,000 per month. Caroline Page-Katz, chief operating officer and president of UOVO, told Observer that the price of art storage “is wide range of terms based on the size of the space, rental and market.” “New York City is different from the market in Denver. In Denver, Denver has a fine art storage facility that has a space that raises prices than Manhattan where it is.”
Prices vary, depending on whether a private room is rented or an object that stores slats in a shared space. Some artworks are physically small, but once packaged and tortured, take up a considerable volume, as crates never stack to prevent accidents of falling. This means that even moderate works may require a relatively large, more expensive area.
But what actually makes facilities like Fortress, Uovo and Crozier much more expensive than self-storage units is that these buildings are climate controlled to museum standards (70°F, 50% relative humidity) and have comprehensive security protocols. Many (although not all) have 24/7 personnel to stop breaking in and resolve any system failures immediately. Fine art storage facilities are almost always one-time buildings, meaning they don’t share space with unrelated tenants and are equipped with backup generators in the event of power outages. (In contrast, self-storage sites are more garage-like and are susceptible to extreme temperature fluctuations and security breaches.)
Private collectors usually reduce the premiums of art insurance when they store work on site. “Insurance companies don’t like artwork in houses that have only surveillance systems,” Levin explained.
This is not to say that accidents and thefts will never happen at the fine art storage location, with little or little coverage. In 2004, a fire broke out in Momart’s East London warehouse, destroying hundreds of works by Tracey Emin, Damien Hirst, Chris ofili and other famous artists. In 2005, a fire broke out at the Artex warehouse in Dedem, Massachusetts, which damaged and destroyed a lot of art. In 1990, a 38-ton Richard Serra sculpture in Madrid disappeared in Madrid in 1990, and the facility entered the takeover in 1998. The museum that owns it was not asked about it until 2006. In another case, London’s fine art logistics mistakenly disposes Anish Kapoor’s 1984 sculpture. In 2005, two St. Louis Fine Art Express employees were arrested to steal $4 million in artworks as they attempted to pass through a third-party fence.
Security is a key issue for art storage sites, not only because of the value of content, but because space is a hub of activity. Gallery owners come and go – sometimes showing work from the live viewing room to potential buyers, other times just swapping crates. Museum curators rotate artworks between storage and its institutional galleries. Collectors or their employees can visit and take photos or record digitally. “We have rooms for photoshoots that can customize the construction facilities for our customers,” James Hendy, senior vice president and general manager at Crozier, told Observer. “We can also provide digital and archive services to our customers if we like.”
Crozier and Uovo hire specially trained art processing programs to package, unpack, and move works for collectors, dealers and agencies. Their climate-controlled vans and trucks are deployed in hurricanes, wildfires or other emergencies, as well as violent relocations such as summer moves. This makes us the ultimate distinction factor. In such a facility, the storage art is just the beginning.
