Artists’ Legacies: Preservation, Study, Dissemination, Institutionalization (2021)

The conference Artists’ Legacies: Preservation, Study, Dissemination, Institutionalisation was intended to be a platform for debate on active management processes of artists’ legacies, covering a wide range of issues: the legal framework of copyright and other legal specificities related to the processes of institutionalising works of art and documents; the challenges of promoting new knowledge, and the dissemination strategies to keep legacies “alive” in academic or museological contexts; the role of curators in the promotion of new critical discourses around works, periods and geographies, contributing to historiographical revision and new dynamics in the art market; and the role of projects such as catalogues raisonnés or documentation centres, which face new challenges in the digital age. We sought to bring together different perspectives on the approach to this rich, diverse subject: participants, who were selected through a call for papers, include representatives from foundations and museums, researchers from academic institutes and universities, artists’ heirs, curators, and cultural management experts. Their contributions are now collected in this volume where fifteen out of the sixteen papers presented in the conference are published. The texts are published in several languages, reflecting the international nature of the event.

The handbook includes an essay on catalogue raisonné projects by Hélène Vandenberghe, daughter of Philippe Vandenberg and director of the Philippe Vandenberg Foundation, and Johannes Muselaers, Head of Collections.