Exploring Christie's $200 million art vault

Works by Rothko, Basquiat, Cy Twombly and more bump up against each other in this humble storage space

Every November, often for no more than a day or two, some of the most valuable of art in the world sits unseen, frame against frame, in the bowels of Christie’s Auction House in New York’s Rockefeller Center.

It’s there as part of New York’s annual November auction bonanza, which begins next week, when Christie’s, Sotheby’s, and Phillips will sell (or at least, try to sell) more than $1.5 billion worth of art over the course of five days.

The paintings in Christie’s vault were shipped from private collections around the globe, often just days in advance of the formal