News: Jason Andrew speaks to “The Guardian”
‘All art is worthy of preserving’: what should artists do to protect what they leave behind?
With a dip in the art market and only one in five artists exhibiting their work in a museum, those on the outskirts are grappling with how to preserve their legacy
by Carolina Drake
Wed 17 Jul 2024 04.05 EDT
The painter Renzo Ortega had been thinking a lot about creating a plan for what to do with all the artwork he had accumulated over his 25-year artist career. A storage room in his native country of Peru and one in North Carolina where he lived were already packed with hundreds and hundreds of paintings. Each embraced different artistic styles, from folk art to expressionism and pre-Hispanic patterns, including vivid landscapes and pieces that captured the realities and contributions of Latin immigrants like himself to US life.
Life is short and unexpected, he reflected on the evening of his 50th birthday, death being the only truth for an artist as they age, and “nothing guarantees that what an artist produces will generate monetary success or cultural recognition,” he said. Something was certain: “If a gallery hasn’t represented me at 50, it never will.”
If the future wasn’t clear, at least it would be for his artworks.
‘If a gallery hasn’t represented me at 50, it never will’ … Renzo Ortega sits with his artworks in his North Carolina storage room in 2024. Photograph: Courtesy of Renzo Ortega Studio
Thinking about his legacy also raised the question: what did success mean to artists outside of the art world establishment? In New York City, Ortega studied at the Art Students League and obtained his MFA at Hunter College. His 25-year trajectory encompasses more than 40 solo and group exhibitions at local galleries and museums along with teaching painting at prestigious art departments and winning more than 10 grants. Despite these achievements, “I’ll go to an art fair or have an exhibit, hear people say how much they love my work, then all the artworks return to the storage room, unsold,” he said.
In a sinking art market where last year, global auctions of fine art fell by 27% from 2022 and only one in five artists exhibited their work at a museum, artists unfairly have to carry the weight to “succeed” under dire conditions. Women and artists of color face even more barriers. In the US, female-identifying artists, Black American artists, and Black female American artists across all genres and periods have represented only 5.3% of all market sales from 2008 to 2022, according to the Burns-Halerpin report. Latino and Indigenous artists are yet to be accounted for. “We don’t have a shortage of creative geniuses and talent,” the art critic and curator Charles Moore, who wrote The Black Market, A Guide to Art Collecting said. “We have a shortage of marrying them with collectors that buy their works and support their creative output.”
Regardless of having obtained blue chip gallery recognition, “all art is worthy of preserving and reflective of a time and an experience,” Jason Andrew, founding partner at Artist Estate Studio, said. “Whether or not the artist is internationally celebrated, the art is still valuable.” Yet, so much of it gets lost to history.
“A first step is to be honest about the artist’s desires and have an estate plan. In the UK and the US, this generally means drafting a will or planning a trust,” recommends Ursula Davila-Villa, co-founder of Davila-Villa & Stothart, which helps artists secure a legacy preservation plan and stewardship. Ortega, for instance, is certain he doesn’t want to give away all his art or assign his children to sort out the storage rooms when he is gone. His biggest fear is that all his paintings will end up at the local thrift shop. “You don’t need a gigantic estate or lawyers on staff to write an understanding of what you want,” Jason Andrew said. [Continued]
