Research network LACUNAE: LAsting Legacies: Contemporary Artists’ Estates Between PUblic Heritage and Private INheritAncE

The death of the generation of visual artists living and working in Europe who redefined art practice in the latter part of the 20th century is imminent. These artists engaged with innovative forms of artistic practice such as performance and time-based media, leaving behind a significant material and immaterial heritage. Many contemporary artists individually and collectively developed practices that sought to question conceptions and structures of authority, power and identity.

These artists often problematised the dominant politics, technologies and ethics of collecting, classifying and archiving artworks, thereby also fundamentally challenging public and private institutions in the preservation of art and cultural heritage. Frequently, such challenges result in a failure of these public and private institutions to engage with contemporary artists’ estates. This is further compounded in the case of BIPOC, LGBTQI+ and women artists, where we see a history of systematic marginalisation and denial of their artistic legacies by established museums and the art market.

The problem of an underrepresentation of these marginalised artists is confirmed by internal audits in major art institutions and has been put in the spotlight by social movements such as Black Lives Matter. Artists working in ephemeral media are particularly at risk of marginalisation and thus face a double exclusion and neglect.

What is at stake here is an urgent need to fill the gaps that result from the marginalisation of contemporary artists’ estates and our network focused on developing an understanding and practice to do so. We propose to analyse how emerging networks of care around contemporary artists’ estates are currently assembled, and how they could better involve marginalised artists and their communities to co-construct lasting legacies.

We use the term contemporary artists’ estates to define the actual, legal inheritances (material and immaterial) as bequeathed to and represented by a public or private entity (association of heirs). When we refer to artists’ legacies, we mean the cultural heritage left behind by artists in a broader sense and as interpreted, contextualised and appreciated by art history, as well as by museums and the art market.

Contemporary artists’ estates are cultural heritage and identity in the making. Currently, there is a surge of interest in the estates of established contemporary artists from private market actors such as gallerists, consultants, lawyers, and financial advisors. These actors rival art historians, conservators, and curators embedded in national public institutions in their attempts at valorising these artists’ legacies. However, in this field of tensions caring for marginalised artists´ estates cannot depend on powerful market forces alone, but also requires established institutions to reconsider their collecting practices. To ensure the preservation of contemporary art in and of Europe in all its diversity, we first need to understand who cares: Who owns controls and manages contemporary artists’ estates, what is being cared for, how and why? 

What we do:
In order to better understand how heritage is being done and diverse identities are negotiated and contested, and to improve the care for marginalised artists’ estates, we investigate who speaks authoritatively and legitimately about these artists’ legacies in Europe (politics), how these legacies can be effectively shared and put to common uses (technologies), and how they can critically inform effective and affective networks of care for art and cultural heritage (ethics), now and in the future.

Our central research question is:
How can networks of public and private actors and factors in the field of contemporary art contribute to more inclusive practices of caring for marginalised artists’ estates and of sharing their legacies, now and in the future?

We take this central question as a basis for collaborative political, technological and ethical reflection and debate. The following sub-questions operationalise our central research question:

1. What are the institutional politics of caring and sharing in the preservation of contemporary artists’ estates and how are they publicly and privately contested when it comes to marginalised artists’ legacies?
2. What different public and private technologies of caring and sharing are employed in the making of artists’ legacies and how can contemporary artists’ estates make good use of them to counter marginalisation?
3. What are established ethics in the caring for and sharing of contemporary artists’ estates and how could alternative norms and values yield relevant affects and effects for marginalised artists’ legacies?

With LACUNAE we react to a clear and present need for a new forum of exchange between the private and public sector in dealing with artists´ estates. Focussing on challenges for marginalised artists´ estates and developing frameworks and guidelines our project will help to diversify, de-canonise and decolonise existing institutional structures and empower communities to care for marginalised artists´ legacies. Unique historical sources are endangered and there is a risk of them being lost for research purposes. Against this perspective of loss, we need to strengthen networks of care through shared expertise and collaboration.

This is why LACUNAE is innovative, timely and important: by putting marginalised artists' estates in a broader perspective of emerging networks of care – in between public and private approaches – we can better understand the challenges of preserving the transnational cultural heritage of contemporary art.