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As the Canon Expands, the Business of Artists’ Estates Booms
Soft Network’s 2023 Scott Burton show. Courtesy Soft Network
by Maddie Klett
via ARTnews
When artist Paul Gardère died in 2011, his daughter, Cat Gardère, undertook her promise to steward his estate and legacy. Having worked as a studio manager and an exhibition coordinator, “I had a lot of familiarity working with artists, archives, and studios,” she told ARTnews. She began the long process of fulfilling her commitment to her father, but there was one catch: the elder Gardère had not set up a trust.
First, she cataloged his assets to prepare the estate for probate—or an inventory and appraisal of artworks to secure ownership in court. Being the sole benefactor of her late parents’ assets meant having some financial resources to begin this work, which involved hiring archivists and working 40 hours a week over 3 years to document inventory and create a digital archive. By 2022, with this digitization largely complete but dwindling funds, she realized there was far more to do in advocating for her father—namely, the work of getting his art into exhibitions and collections.
On Instagram, Gardère saw that her high school classmate, Max Warsh, was posting about the work of his late aunt, the writer and textile artist Rosemary Mayer. Mayer had a posthumous retrospective at the Swiss Institute in New York in 2021, which traveled to three institutions in Europe. “I thought it was serendipitous that somebody in my network was also doing art estate work,” Gardère said. It ended up being a blessing.
Warsh connected her to the Artist’s Foundation & Estate Leaders’ List (AFELL), a Google group started by Chelsea Spengemann, with Tracy Bartley, in 2019 for others in this situation to share resources. AFELL’s more than 300 members range from individuals to operations like the Joan Mitchell Foundation and the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation. While much of its focus is devoted to helping steward the legacies of dead artists, some living artists, like Simone Leigh, have also used AFELL’s resources with the hope of learning best practices for legacy planning.
AFELL is just one outfit that has emerged in the past decade to help artists and their descendants ensure a future for their art. And as under-recognized artists get more and more attention within galleries and museums, these entities are increasingly important, working behind the scenes to help mount projects that would otherwise have been impossible.
Take the case of Soft Network, a New York–based operation that is “part shared workspace and active storage space for multiple artists estates, and part space for exhibitions and programs,” as Spengemann put it in a phone interview. Spengemann runs Soft Network with Warsh’s sister, the art historian Marie Warsh, and together they have helped steer the estates of Mayer and Stan VanDerBeek. They call their labor “legacy work.” This past September, they formerly launched AFELL as a part of their organization.
One such project was a Paul Gardère show held at Soft Network’s exhibition space, located down the hall from the operation’s offices in a SoHo building. In 2022, Cat Gardère was the inaugural participant in a burgeoning residency program run by Soft Network. “They said they would act as mentors and a support network,” Gardère recalled. The organization also presented a solo booth of Gardère’s work at the Independent art fair in September of that year.
Cat Gardère credits this exposure with helping secure exhibiting opportunities, including a museum presentation of that same two-person show with Williams at the Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers University. She also said her father was included in “Surrealism and Us,” a 2024 exhibition about of Surrealism in the Caribbean and the African diaspora that appeared the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, after Soft Network spotlighted his work. The curator of that exhibition, María Elena Ortiz, knew about his work but had never seen a piece in person until the Independent presentation. Without Spengemann and Warsh starting the conversation about his work, “I don’t that connection would not have been made,” Cat said. A solo survey of Gardère’s is currently on view in New York at Cooper Union.
In spring 2023, the second exhibition at Soft Network featured living artists’ works alongside a piece of public art by the late sculptor and performance artist Scott Burton. The Burton piece, Atrium Furnishment (1986), was originally installed in the atrium of the Equitable Life Assurance Company in New York. A seating arrangement combining marble, brass, onyx, and plants, Atrium Furnishment had never been restaged prior to this show. The curator of the Equitable Art Collection, Jeremy Johnston, gave access to the piece, which was put in storage after the company moved out of the Seventh Avenue building in 2016. Johnston independently runs a collaborative curatorial organization called Darling Green, and together with Soft Network they arrived at the concept and design for the presentation.
At first glance, Burton’s estate has steady institutional footing: in accordance with the artist’s will, the Museum of Modern Art agreed to take it after his death from AIDS-related causes in 1989. This meant MoMA was next in line to receive all of Burton’s art, archives and his copyright after his partner Johnathan Erlitz died in 1998. But MoMA “didn’t have a point person, or any structure around this history,” Spengemann said. A recent article by Julia Halprin for the New York Times delves into how the museum—despite its vast resources and position of cultural prominence—has been challenged to adequately manage this bequest.
With their 2023 show, Soft Network and Darling Green are among a few players bringing Burton’s work back into the spotlight. In 2022, the art historian David Getsy released a book about Burton’s art, and the Pulitzer Arts Foundation in St. Louis is staging the first survey of Burton’s work in roughly four decades.
Spegemann and Warsh are seeking 501(c)3 status, and they currently run on private donations, grants, and consultancy fees based on a sliding scale. That means they operate on a nonprofit model, making them different from the similarly scaled Artist Estate Studio LLC, who does consulting for the estates of painters Jack Tworkov and Janice Biala, which cofounder Jason Andrew said is backed by client fees.
But these endeavors are on the smaller, scrappier side in this new frontier, with more well-known estates working with bigger firms like Schwartzman&. Allan Schwartzman conceived Schwartzman& in 2020 as an advisory whose services extend beyond individual collectors to artists and institutions. Over Zoom, Schwartzman told ARTnews that, upon starting this venture, he was “aware that the fields have become much more focused on the moment and the transactional. I decided as an adviser, I would do the opposite. And I would focus on various aspects of the ecosystem that that I felt were suffering.” In short, this is the work that goes into producing value for art—and typically the kind of thing left to galleries. But where agencies like Schwartzman’s differ is that they do not conduct sales, hence why galleries are still necessary to represent estates, even if they already work with his firm or a similar outfit.
Estate and legacy planning is one of Schwartzman&’s largest areas of growth. The advisory consults seven artist estates, including those of Jimmie Durham and Robert Rauschenberg. Schwartzman said he also works with “several artists of mature ages planning for legacy,” but he declined to name which ones.
A curator at the New Museum in 1977 before finding success as an advisor (his previous firm with Amy Cappellazzo was acquired by Sotheby’s for $50 million in 2016), Schwartzman has been thinking about legacy work for decades. “The first wave of baby boomers marked a dramatic increase in the number of artists,” he shared. “Now those individuals are past what usually would be considered retirement age, and very few, if any, have planned thoughtfully for their legacies.”
Solana Chehtman, the director of artist programs at the Joan Mitchell Foundation, corroborated this uptick in aging artists needing assistance with legacy planning. In an email, she described how the foundation’s CALL (Creating a Living Legacy) initiative was conceived in 2007 as a grant program, for artists to self-direct the use of funds.
“It quickly became clear that artists didn’t know how to go about this work,” she wrote, “so we started training ‘legacy specialists’ that we partnered with the artists to support them in organizing their studios, documenting and inventorying their work, and crafting the narrative behind their trajectory.” She’s seen the growing demand for this knowledge. In response, the foundation has compiled and published free “CALL workbooks,” which outline the knowledge accrued by their specialists. The workbooks are often referenced by the AFELL community as a starting point for members navigating these new waters.
Yet even among artists who have adequate estate planning with legal counsel, Schwartzman has noticed that the many other facets of estate stewardship are rarely breached during an artist’s lifetime. He acknowledged, “Not a lot of people want to deal with questions of: What happens when I’m not here?” Nor can they, and according to him, that means a lot of the advisory’s work centers on how to keep an artist’s practice in the mix of present-day markets and critical discourse.
Link to Full Article: Read More
Tech Start-Up Aims to Get Artists Royalties for Resale
Fairchain generates digital contracts and certificates of title and authenticity, allowing artists to track their work and share in secondary market proceeds.
Even before the artist Robert Rauschenberg famously objected to seeing a 1958 painting he originally sold for $900 flip for $85,000 in 1973, artists have been frustrated by not receiving royalties for their work when it changes hands.
Previous efforts to address this over the years have failed. But now, as musicians and other creative producers assert more control over their future sales and blockchain technology has allowed for easier tracking of intellectual property, two Stanford alumni have started a business to help visual artists reap the financial rewards when their work is resold privately or comes up for auction, in some cases at many multiples of the original price.
“There has been exponential growth in the secondary market, but artists have largely been left behind, even though they are essential to it,” Max Kendrick, one of the founders, said. “How do we create a more sustainable model for the artist and the galleries that support them?”
Charlie Jarvis, 24, a computer scientist, and Kendrick, 36, a former diplomat and a son of the sculptor Mel Kendrick, started the company, called Fairchain, in 2019. Little by little, it is gaining traction with artists and gallerists.
Frida Kahlo painting breaks record at Sotheby auction and shines light on women artists
A self-portrait by artist Frida Kahlo sold for just under $35 million this week at Sotheby's in New York. The sale highlighted how the works of women artists can command incredible sums on the world market. But that hardly tells the whole story. Anthony Mason has more.
A self-portrait by artist Frida Kahlo sold for just under $35 million this week at Sotheby's in New York. The sale highlighted how the works of women artists can command incredible sums on the world market. But that hardly tells the whole story. Anthony Mason has more.
Hauser & Wirth Publishers to release 'Marcel Duchamp' monograph and catalogue raisonné more than 60 years since original edition
After being out of print for more than sixty years, the Grove Press English edition is now back in circulation with Hauser & Wirth Publishers’ fully authorized facsimile of Duchamp’s seminal first monograph and catalogue raisonné.
‘Marcel Duchamp’
Global release date: 8 November 2021
Volume I: Facsimile of the 1959 English edition of ‘Marcel Duchamp’ by Robert Lebel, with texts by Marcel Duchamp, André Breton and H.P. Roché, design and layout by Marcel Duchamp and Arnold Fawcus, hardcover
Volume II: Supplement, edited by Jean-Jacques Lebel & Association Marcel Duchamp, with texts by Jean-Jacques Lebel, Robert Lebel, Man Ray and Michael Taylor; foreword by Harald Falckenberg and an introduction by Michaela Unterdörfer, design and production by fluid, softcover
£100 / $125 / €110 / CHF 120
'Marcel Duchamp' became the go-to book on the legendary artist for many decades following its publication in late 1959, when editions in French and English were simultaneously released. After being out of print for more than sixty years, the Grove Press English edition is now back in circulation with Hauser & Wirth Publishers’ fully authorized facsimile of Duchamp’s seminal first monograph and catalogue raisonné.
This iconic title is the culmination of many years of Duchamp’s collaboration with its author, art historian and critic Robert Lebel. To this day, the book’s texts, which include chapters authored by Duchamp, H.P. Roché, and André Breton, remain just as relevant and impactful, as does Duchamp’s book design. Hauser & Wirth Publishers reanimate 'Marcel Duchamp' with its faithful reproduction of the 1959 Grove Press edition alongside Jean-Jacques Lebel, Robert Lebel’s son, and Association Marcel Duchamp, representing the artist’s estate.
The facsimile of the historic edition is presented in a slipcase with a supplement edited by Jean-Jacques Lebel and Association Marcel Duchamp. The supplement features texts and archival material that stitch together the story of Duchamp and Lebel’s close collaboration and, as contributor Michael Taylor writes, how the original publication signified a ‘sea change in the artist’s receptivity to critical interpretation.’
About the project
Over the past decade, Jean-Jacques Lebel and Association Marcel Duchamp, pursued a passion to reprint 'Marcel Duchamp'. The prominent title introduced the revolutionary artist to English speaking audiences in the late 1950s and remains a vital point of reference for understanding Duchamp’s oeuvre, his wholly unique ideas and inner circle of artistic peers. Since 2018, Hauser & Wirth Publishers has been working alongside Lebel and Association Marcel Duchamp to realise the 2021 reedition, a testament to the trust bestowed on the imprint to see the project through to fruition. Re-creating a title that was fabricated more than 60 years ago required specialists; fluid, the curatorial-design studio helped by art historians and book specialists Axel Heil and Margrit Brehm, led this effort. They re-recreated the original typefaces as digital fonts, positioning each letter and image exactly where they were in the original. Paper conservators and printers were consulted, and together, the collaborative team worked to produce a facsimile that matches the edition that Duchamp personally signed off on in 1959, whilst working with contemporary printing tools.
Since Duchamp’s death in 1968, his legacy and influence has continued to grow and inspire new generations of artists. Hauser & Wirth Publishers specialises in lived art histories, and 'Marcel Duchamp' is considered the authoritative progenitor of this series. The reedition of 'Marcel Duchamp' brings readers closer to the lived experience and creative process of one of the most influential artists of the 20th century. Re-examining the artist-led publication more than a half-century after its original release is an indispensable feature of this project. The supplement features a roster of texts that explore the relationship between Duchamp and Robert Lebel, considering the critical reception of the book, and extending the narrative of Duchamp’s community, life, and work that began in the monograph.
The new theatrical space of Amy Lincoln
The new theatrical space of Amy Lincoln. September 15, 2021 2:04 pm. Amy Lincoln, installation view. Courtesy Sperone Westwater, New York.
Amy Lincoln, installation view. Courtesy Sperone Westwater, New York
Originally published by Two Coats of Paint
Contributed by Jason Andrew
Amy Lincoln’s Soaring trajectory has locked in the natural world, the phenomena within it, and the epic world of myth. Ten new paintings now on view at Sperone Westwater embrace these pervasive elements while exploring a bold new theatrical space.
I first met Lincoln well over a decade ago and have curated several shows that included her work. As a recent grad of Tyler School of Art (Stanley Whitney was one of her instructors), she had just returned from short teaching stint in Yokohama, Japan, and was living in a fourth-floor walkup loft above a laundromat at Melrose and Central in Bushwick. A bunch of artists had landed there including Jesse Bercowetz, Ianthe Jackson, Kevin Curran (now married to Lincoln), and Ben Godward. They were part of the genesis of Bushwick’s nascent but growing art scene, and Lincoln was its Henri Rousseau.
She has always had a highly stylized approach to her work. Even back then, we came to appreciate her offset proportions, one-point perspective, and use of sharp chromatic color in her small portraits of friends, still lifes of plants, and well-placed interiors on MDF. Lincoln’s distinctive approach to painting bordered on the primitive, leaving one with a sense of mystery and eccentricity.
As the complexity of her paintings grew, they moved beyond mere observation into the realm of phenomenology and meaning. Her panels expanded to include landscapes teeming with flora and fauna bathed in the sun, the stars, the moon, or a combination of the three. By resolutely skirting human truths and contradictions in terms of imagery, her work paradoxically seemed to embrace them remotely in suggesting themes such as urban isolation and alienation.
“I find myself trying to figure out how realistic things should be versus imaginatively depicted,” Lincoln said in a 2019 interview with Maria Vogel. “I think whatever makes the painting more compelling is what I try to choose. There’s a range within a painting. Some things are more realistic, other things more like symbols.”
Pam Glick’s code theory
For her new paintings, on display at The Journal Gallery in their rotating “Tennis Elbow” series, Pam Glick seems to embrace both the automatic and the procedural.
Pam Glick, installation view
Pam Glick, installation view
Originally Published by Two Coats of Paint
Contributed by Jason Andrew
Artists often have generative strategies for jumpstarting a work. The AbExers’ had their automatism and the minimalists had their procedural arrangements. For her new paintings, on display at The Journal Gallery in their rotating “Tennis Elbow” series, Pam Glick seems to embrace both the automatic and the procedural.
I’m a huge fan of the sci-fi action film The Matrix. When Keanu Reeves’ character Neo begins to intuitively translate the binary numeric system cascading down a post-apocalyptic computer screen, the film gains momentum. Staring intensely at Glick’s paintings I found a way into her work—by thinking about code theory.
Glick has been celebrated for her “improvisational flair,” and for many years her paintings have been compositionally based on a matrix. Densely painted, the new paintings incorporate painted marks that are sectioned into rows that generate linear combinations. Through multiple works, there is a single band of painted information uniquely chroma-keyed to the surrounding fields. This single vertical row space serves as a generator-matrix, driving the narrative of a given painting towards a final resolution. As in The Matrix, these bands seem to reference the “real world” as distinct from a controlled and regulated one – privileged moments of consciousness within Glick’s matrix.
Case Study: Running a Famous Artist’s Estate Is a Maze of Infighting and Deal-Making. Here’s How the Rothkos and Other Families Did it
Children weigh in on dealing with their famous parents’ cultural heritage.
Children weigh in on dealing with their famous parents’ cultural heritage.
When artist Robert Indiana was on his deathbed, lawyers for the Morgan Art Foundation, which holds the copyright to some of Indiana’s most famous works, were busy filing a lawsuit against the foundation Indiana had named as the sole beneficiary of his estate. Three years and millions of dollars in legal fees later, the dispute between the two parties was finally settled this June, but not before the confusion over who had authority over the work had a chance to upset Indiana’s market, as well as cast shadows on his artistic legacy.
Case Study: An Indonesian Theme Park Must Destroy Its Knockoff of Chris Burden’s ‘Urban Light’ After Losing a Suit Brought by the Artist’s Estate
Rabbit Town has 30 days to remove the infringing installation and apologize to the Burden estate.
Visitors at Chris Burden's Urban Light installation at LACMA. Photo ©Chris Burden/licensed by the Chris Burden Estate and Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
An Indonesian selfie paradise has been ordered to destroy one of its most popular attractions due to a copyright violation. The offending photo op, Love Light, appears to be a ripoff of Urban Light (2008), the famed public art installation by the late artist Chris Burden.
The Indonesian Commercial Court at the Central Jakarta District Court agreed with that analysis, siding with the Burden estate in its lawsuit against Rabbit Town. The tourist attraction on the island of West Java, in the city of Bandung, has 30 days to remove the infringing artwork and issue a public apology to the estate.
“This is a landmark case for the Indonesian court system, and a win for all artists globally,” Yayoi Shionoiri, the executive director of the Burden estate, told Artnet News in an email. “We believe this decision sets a precedent that artist rights can be protected internationally through the application of the copyright framework.”
Rabbit Town did not respond to inquiries from Artnet News, but the park’s Instagram account was still posting photographs of the infringing work as recently as yesterday, calling it “our icon.”
The original Burden installation greets visitors at the entrance to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art.
Case Study: Judy Chicago Prepares to Release Her Autobiography
Judy Chicago Reflects on What It Takes to Preserve an Artistic Legacy
At 81, Chicago’s opportunities continue to multiply.
by Arden Fanning Andrews
In these turbulent times, creativity and empathy are more necessary than ever to bridge divides and find solutions. Artnet News’s Art and Empathy Project is an ongoing investigation into how the art world can help enhance emotional intelligence, drawing insights and inspiration from creatives, thought leaders, and great works of art.
It’s noon mountain time, and Judy Chicago is in her kitchen. “She makes the best coffee,” her studio manager says while positioning the camera toward the sunroom sofa bathed in Belen, New Mexico light.
Coming into frame and taking a seat, Chicago wears a pink hoodie over a t-shirt with “It’s A Judy Thing (You Wouldn’t Understand)” emblazoned across the front. At home, the artist, educator, author, and self-described humanist shares 7,000 square feet with her husband, photographer Donald Woodman, and her team. “Downstairs is all commercial,” she explains. “Studio, office, storage.”
Photo info published on ArtNet.com: Judy Chicago, 2020. © Judy Chicago/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York. Photo © Donald Woodman/ARS, NY.
Art, Money & Law: Notes on the Clyfford Still Estate
Ten years after Still’s death, the disposition of his estate remains unresolved. Herewith some speculations on the future of this huge cache of important work.
View of the exhibition "Clyfford Still: Paintings," 1979, at the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
By Ben Heller
Ten years after Still’s death, the disposition of his estate remains unresolved. Herewith some speculations on the future of this huge cache of important work.
When I expose a painting I would have it say, “Here am I; this is my presence, my feeling, myself. Here I stand implacable, proud, alive, naked, unafraid…“
—Clyfford Still, May 1951
A great joy surges through me when I work. … With tense slashes and few thrusts the beautiful white fields receive their color and the work is finished in a few minutes. … And as the blues or reds or blacks leap and quiver in their tenuous ambience or rise in austere thrusts to carry their power infinitely beyond the bounds of the limitating field, I move with them. … Only they are complete too soon, and I must quickly move on to another to keep the spirit alive and unburdened by the labor my Puritan reflexes tell me must be the cost of any joy.
—Clyfford Still, February 1956
Clyfford Still, one of the great painters of the Abstract Expressionist period, died in 1980 at the age of 75. He left an art estate whose size and character are unique in our time. The estate and the way it is being handled raise important issues which have troubled us in the past and will continue to trouble us in the future. We wonder: What are the different rights of the deceased, the heirs, and the public in that estate? What is the best way to dispose of so major an art estate?
Case Study: The Enormous Seven-Part Catalogue Raisonné on Pioneering Spiritual Abstractionist Hilma af Klint Is Finally Being Published
The first three of seven volumes are out this month.
Hilma af Klint, Childhood Group IV (1907). Photo courtesy of Bokförlaget Stolpe/Artbook | DAP.
By Sarah Cascone
When the Guggenheim Museum was planning its 2018 retrospective on Hilma af Klint, the Swedish artist was not exactly a household name. When Klint died in 1944, she left behind a will that precluded her work from being publicly shown for decades.
But the exhibition, showcasing Klint’s visionary abstractions—which she created five years before what is widely considered the birth of abstract art and the Modernist movement—became a runaway hit, attracting more than 600,000 visitors, an institutional record.
The catalogue begins with the automatic spiritual sketches Klint created as part of the Five, a group of women who sought to contact the dead under the guidance of a medium during séances. It goes on to present the ambitious, large-scale abstract works that she made at the behest of one of her spirit guides, which were to be displayed in a circular temple—and the 10 small sketchbooks she used to illustrate the project when she wanted to share it with others during her travels.
Individual volumes are priced at $50 each, or the full clothbound set can be pre-ordered for $350, with an expected ship date of late November. The catalogue was designed by Patric Leo and includes texts by Daniel Birnbaum and Kurt Almqvist.
Case Study (via Artnet.com): How Does Jenny Holzer Get the Rights for All the Texts She Uses in Her Artwork?
Can a politician get sued for plagiarizing someone else's speech? And how can artists use pop music in their work without getting into trouble?
A woman watches Jenny Holzer's projection mapping creation entitled "For Bilbao" on the Guggenheim Bilbao Museum's facade on March 21, 2019. (Photo by ANDER GILLENEA / AFP via Getty Images)
I’m enthralled with Jenny Holzer’s new app, which allows you to recreate one of those pieces where she projects words onto buildings. (In this case, the text comes from great authors and thinkers, like W.E.B. Du Bois and Plato.) This iteration originated at the campus of the University of Chicago, but is now available around the world. My question is: How does she get the rights to all those words?
Jenny Holzer is a national treasure. In 1990, she became the first woman to represent the US at the Venice Biennale, and her work has always reflected our country’s conscience.
From 1977 to 2001, Holzer penned most of her own material, but she has said that she “quit writing because I wanted to cover more themes, more emotions, to create more depth than I could muster alone. I am not really a writer. So I began to choose texts by others.”
She is sometimes called an appropriation artist, but that term can be misleading. For one thing, her collaborators usually receive credit. (She and Polish poet Wisława Szymborska have met for pineapple, as you do.)
In fact, her clearance efforts might go above and beyond what’s strictly necessary. When you encounter Holzer’s work in the wild—say, on the back of a truck—you’re not necessarily aware that it’s an artwork, so it would be hard to argue she’s taking credit for something she hasn’t put her name on. Moreover, short phrases from longer works like books and poems tend not to be protected at all, unless they are especially distinct. (This was quickly made clear to the people who tried to make mugs that read “E.T. Phone Home”without the approval of Universal Pictures.)
Copyright also only exists for the length of a creator’s life, plus 70 years. Since this latest project involves U Chicago’s core curriculum, most of its authors are likely long gone.
AES in the Wall Street Journal: You Inherited a Bunch of Papers. Now What?
Archives may hold historical and other value even if the deceased wasn’t famous
Archives may hold historical and other value even if the deceased wasn’t famous
At the end of our lives, we leave behind memories—and lots of paper.
Not just diaries, letters and photographs, but rough drafts, notes, sketchbooks, date books, check books and receipts.
Clearly, the doodles, random jottings and other ephemera that most people leave behind are of no interest to anybody. But that isn’t always the case.
The archives of singer-songwriter Woody Guthrie, for one, were purchased in 2011 for $6 million by the George Kaiser Family Foundation. The archive features rare recordings, journals and handwritten lyrics, but also includes contracts, royalty statements, employment and military records, and rent receipts.
That was an exceptional case, of course. But more common are archives of people who, though relatively unknown, made important contributions in a particular field, were important to an institution, or had connections with famous people.
Jason Andrew, founding partner of Artist Estate Studio in New York City, a service offering archive management to artists and estates of artists, poses the example of a painter who never sold any works but who was friends with well-known artists. In such a case, Mr. Andrew says, an archivist or collector focused on those other artists may wish to acquire that person’s papers.
So for people who inherit those kinds of archives, it is worth doing a little investigation to see if they have any commercial value.
AES featured in Essay on the Art Market by Jonathan Kandell
by Jonathan Kandell
via Art & Antiques, Winter 2018-2019
FOR THE BETTER part of a century, the primary art market embraced Miami Beach. a simple, sturdy strategy: Artist creates work ... dealer puts it on display ... collector visits gallery and purchases the art .... But the internet age has battered this business model. It has also spawned a new breed of intermediaries representing artists or collectors-people like Jason Andrew and Lisa Schiff.
"I always align myself with the artists-I see myself as an extension of their studios," says Andrew, a Brooklyn-based promoter who uses unorthodox tactics on behalf of emerging and established artists. His best-known client is the late Elizabeth Murray, whose estate he represents. Schiff, an art consultant for collectors, readily admits she never sets foot in a studio or deals with artists. "I only work with a select group of very high net worth, sophisticated people," says Schiff, whose Tribeca office is a few blocks from her loft, formerly owned by the late James Gandolfini. Her most prominent client is Leonardo DiCaprio.
Despite the vast chasm between them, Andrew and Schiff are protagonists in an era that has witnessed the dramatic decline in the fortunes and influence of many galleries. Gagosian, Zwirner, and Pace continue to rack up record annual profits. But incomes are plummeting at long established middle-market galleries as collectors, guided by advisors like Schiff, scout out acquisitions on Instagram and prefer making their purchases at international art fairs. Frustrated by increasingly limited opportunities at galleries, artists turn to promoters like Andrew to create seductive websites, arrange studio visits and stage pop-up showings of their works.
Case Study (via NYTimes): Whaam! Pow! Lichtenstein Foundation Starts to Wind Down With Big Gifts
Roy Lichtenstein’s “Sweet Dreams, Baby!” from 1965. The screenprint is one of the works going to the Whitney Museum of American Art from the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation. Credit Estate of Roy Lichtenstein
At a time when some single-artist foundations are exploring new ways to stay relevant by hosting artist residencies, or giving prizes, the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation is making a dramatic impact by beginning the process of winding itself down.
AES in Observer: The Bad Planning That Leaves So Many Artists’ Estates Tangled in Lawsuits
Robert Indiana with his 'Love' sculpture in Central Park, New York City in 1971. Photo: Jack Mitchell / Getting Images
Daniel Grant quotes Founding Partner, Jason Andrew, in his article The Bad Planning That Leaves So Many Artists’ Estates Tangled in Lawsuits on the occasion of the deputed legacy of Robert Indiana.
Case Study (via ARTNEWS, Sept 2000): The Embattled Legacy of Kurt Schwitters
Download the complete article at the ARTNews archive here.
Avedon, Unsigned
Ruedi Hofmann, master printer for the photographer’s magnum opus, “In the American West,” understood that his payment would be a set of signed prints. He has the prints, but they were never signed. Whose prints are they, anyway?
By Richard B. Woodward
Hanging in the foyer of Ruedi and Ann Hofmann’s art-filled home in Newburgh is a large black-and-white photograph by Richard Avedon.
Unsettling in scale as well as content, it’s a half-length portrait, larger than life-size, of a curly-haired teenage boy who stands against a white background holding up the sagging skin and shiny entrails of an eviscerated rattlesnake. The headless animal’s dark blood is spattered across the bib of his overalls; its curdlike guts squish through the fingers on his right hand. The boy’s hieratic gesture is like that of someone performing an ancient sacrifice, and his hard gaze suggests he has been doing this for much of his young life.
Not many would choose such an image to welcome visitors. Mr. Hofmann is clearly proud of it, though, and more than 100 others like it.
As master printer on Avedon’s last major project, “In the American West,” Mr. Hofmann was responsible for bringing out the myriad gray shades and material details in “Boyd Fortin,” the portrait of the 13-year-old rattlesnake skinner, and the other images of weathered, hard-bitten characters featured in the landmark 1985 exhibition and book.
Judge Awards Three Pals of Robert Rauschenberg $25 Million
Court decision could prompt more artists to specify trustee fees in trust documents.
Robert Rauschenberg.
Photo: maría josé/Flickr.
On Friday, August 1st, a Florida judge granted Robert Rauschenberg’s accountant and two other longtime associates $24.6 million in fees for overseeing the artist’s estate—more than 60 times what Rauschenberg’s foundation deemed reasonable. “The amount awarded certainly gives new meaning to the phrase ‘friends with benefits’, when an artist’s pals are so richly rewarded,’’ said Thomas C. Danziger, an art lawyer who wasn’t involved in the multiyear court battle, in an e-mail.
Rauschenberg died in 2008, at age 82. The three trustees of the Robert Rauschenberg Revocable Trust, which was founded in 1994, had originally sought a fee of $60 million. At trial, they dialed back their request to between $51 and $55 million. The foundation, the prime beneficiary of the trust, argued that a total of $375,000 divided among the three was fair.
The court decision could prompt more artists to specify trustee fees in trust documents, Danziger said.
Christopher Rauschenberg Responds
Christopher Rauschenberg, the artist’s son, is chairman of the Rauschenberg Foundation, which provides residencies to artists on Captiva Island, Florida, and makes grants to arts and environmental organizations, among other endeavors. He was disappointed by circuit court judge Jay Rosman’s decision. “As we have said all along, we believe this case is a simple matter of evaluating the value of the services by the trustees, which we consider to be modest and not meriting an amount of this magnitude,’’ he said in a statement.
Robert Goldman, a lawyer who represents the foundation, was asked in June whether Rauschenberg would be turning over in his grave given the trustee demands. “Turning over is mild,’’ Goldman said in a video interview with the News-Press of Fort Myers, Florida. “He probably would come out and choke a few people.’’
The trustees are Darryl Pottorf, an artist who assisted and lived with Rauschenberg for over 25 years; Bennet Grutman, the artist’s accountant for 18 years; and Bill Goldston, a Rauschenberg business partner with a fine art–print publishing company. Their lawyer, Michael Gay, didn’t return an e-mail seeking comment. As they had already split $8 million in fees, the judge ordered that they were entitled to another $16.4 million, totaling $24.6 million. Their accomplishments on behalf of the trust included developing and executing a plan to withdraw Rauschenberg work from the market when he died, “to prevent a decline in value from speculators or collectors flooding the market with his art,’’ the judge wrote. Rosman cited appraisals stating that the value of assets soared from $606 million in 2008 to $2.2 billion four years later. While the rising art market and Rauschenberg’s talent were “contributing factors” in the appreciation, the judge ruled that the trustees’ performance played a key role. “The court finds that the trustees made very good decisions and rendered very good service,’’ Rosman wrote.