Courtney J. Martin, executive director of the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, discusses its approach to the artist’s lifelong philanthropy, the intricacies of stewarding an artist’s goals and passions, and more.

Robert Rauschenberg Foundation

This ongoing series features conversations with experts in the field of artists’ estates and legacy stewardship who offer insights that might prove useful to artists, their staffs, foundations and estates, scholars, and others. For this installment, Mary Dean, Ed Ruscha’s studio director; Waltraud Forelli, Anselm Kiefer’s studio director and board member of the Eschaton–Anselm Kiefer Foundation; and Vladimir Yavachev, director of operations for the Christo and Jeanne-Claude Foundation, speak with Gagosian managing director Kara Vander Weg about their engagements with archives and collections management, as well as about the process of ensuring the perseverance of complex large-scale projects. The conversation occurred during a Building a Legacy symposium in London earlier this year; the following has been condensed and edited for clarity.

Building a Legacy: Mary Dean, Waltraud Forelli, and Vladimir Yavachev

This ongoing series features conversations with experts in the field of artists’ estates and legacy stewardship who offer insights that might prove useful to artists, their staff, foundations and estates, scholars, and others. For this installment, Daniel Belasco, executive director of the Al Held Foundation, meets with Valerie Balint, director of Historic Artists Homes and Studios (HAHS), to discuss the importance of preserving and engaging with artists’ personal and creative spaces.

Historic Artists Homes and Studios

This ongoing series features conversations with experts in the field of artists’ estates and legacy stewardship who offer insights that might prove useful to artists, their staff, foundations and estates, scholars, and others. For this installment, Daniel Belasco, the executive director of the Al Held Foundation, meets with Daniel Tobin, the cofounder of Urban Art Projects (UAP), to discuss the role that a major contemporary-art foundry plays in artists’ legacies.

Urban Art Projects

The Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin is an internationally renowned research center with a long and esteemed history of managing millions of objects, including books, manuscripts, photographs, art, and more. Dr. Stephen Enniss, director of the Center, and Megan Barnard, associate director for administration and curatorial affairs, met with Lisa Turvey to consider the history of the Ransom Center and their ongoing work in the field of archives, from acquisition to stewardship.

The Ransom Center

For this installment of our Building a Legacy series, Nicholas Cullinan, the director of London’s National Portrait Gallery, speaks with author and curator Allie Biswas.

National Portrait Gallery

This ongoing series features conversations with experts in the field of artists’ estates and legacy stewardship who offer insights that might prove useful to artists, their staff, foundations and estates, scholars, and others. For this installment, Lisa Turvey, editor of the catalogue raisonné of Ed Ruscha’s works on paper, met with Sharon Flescher, executive director of the International Foundation for Art Research (IFAR), and Lisa Duffy-Zeballos, art research director of IFAR. They discussed the complexities of provenance research, the burgeoning of the field in recent years, and the multiple resources available for tracing the ownership history of artworks.

Provenance

Since 1958, the Smithsonian Institution’s Archives of American Art has collected more than 2,500 oral histories from the most influential voices in American cultural history. Lisa Turvey, editor of the catalogue raisonné of Ed Ruscha’s works on paper, met with the Archives’ Ben Gillespie, oral historian, and Jennifer Snyder, oral history archivist, to speak about the Oral History Program.

The Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art

For this installment of Building a Legacy, the&nbsp;Quarterly’s Alison McDonald meets with Michael Dayton Hermann, the director of licensing, marketing, and sales at the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts, to discuss questions around intellectual property and licensing.

The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts

A vast centralized digital platform dedicated to the life and work of Marcel Duchamp has been created by Association Marcel Duchamp, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and Centre Pompidou, Paris, to provide access to more than eighteen thousand documents and artworks, comprising nearly fifty thousand digitized images. Here, we share a conversation about the genesis and development of the online Duchamp Research Portal.

The Duchamp Research Portal

First Library, La Mansana de Chinati/The Block, Judd Foundation, Marfa, Texas. Photo: Matthew Millman © Judd Foundation

Richard Shiff speaks with Caitlin Murray, director of archives and programs at Judd Foundation, about the archive of Donald Judd, how to approach materials that occupy the gray area between document and art, and some of the considerations unique to stewarding an archive housed within and adjacent to spaces conceived by the artist.

Judd Foundation Archives

Rene Ricard, So Who Left Who, 2007 © Estate of Rene Ricard

In this video, Raymond Foye and Rani Singh discuss the general principles and methodologies of archiving, editing, and presenting the work of overlooked artists and writers. They share firsthand accounts and learning experiences from working with artists and poets such as Jordan Belson, Gregory Corso, Rene Ricard, and Harry Smith.

Famously Unknown: Legacy Building in the Art World

The&nbsp;Quarterly’s Alison McDonald speaks with Carlos Basualdo, the Keith L. and Katherine Sachs Senior Curator of Contemporary Art at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, about the role of museums in the preservation of artists’ legacies.

Carlos Basualdo

Helen Frankenthaler, Cool Summer, 1962, oil on canvas, 69 ¾ × 120 inches (177.2 × 304.8 cm), Collection Helen Frankenthaler Foundation.

The&nbsp;Quarterly’s Alison McDonald speaks with&nbsp;Clifford Ross, Frederick J. Iseman, and Dr. Lise Motherwell,&nbsp;members of the board of directors of the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation,&nbsp;and Elizabeth Smith, executive director,&nbsp;about the foundation’s decision to establish a multiyear initiative dedicated to providing $5 million in&nbsp;covid-19 relief for artists and arts professionals.

The Helen Frankenthaler Foundation on COVID-19 Relief Funding

Research materials from the Nam June Paik Archive.

This discussion considers ways artist studios can develop and define their archives in anticipation of future institutional requirements and establish parameters that can play a strategic role in shaping an artist’s&nbsp;legacy.

Heather Gendron and Jill Sterrett on Artists’ Archives

Luke Nikas, with Deborah Kass’s Vote Hillary (2016) on wall.

Attorney Luke Nikas tells Alison McDonald about what steps artists, scholars, and authentication boards can take to protect themselves.

Luke Nikas on Art Law

This ongoing series features conversations with experts in the field of artists’ estates and legacy stewardship who offer insights that might prove useful to artists, their staff, foundations and estates, scholars, and others.

Gagosian Quarterly

Building a Legacy

Stay up-to-date on artists, exhibitions, and events.