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Artists' estates: keep or get rid of them?1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2016

Dorothee Haffner
Dorothee Haffner*
Affiliation:
Hochschule für Technik und Wirtschaft (HTW) Berlin, Dept. 5, Museum Studies, 10313 Berlin, Germany. Email: [email protected]
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Abstract

The fate of the estates (Nachlässe) of visual artists are as varied as the fortunes of the artists themselves.2 It is only the well-known, high value artists with considerable resources who have the means to create their own museum or archive.3 Yet the storage and preservation of the vast remains of artists' estates is an increasingly urgent matter. Artist output has dramatically increased since the middle of the 20th century, as has the awareness of the importance of artists bequests. Artists have often taken matters into their own hands while they are still living. More often though, it is the heirs to an estate who are faced with the task after the artist's death. The immediate family (widow, widower, children) understand the importance of the work and feel a sense of obligation. But the second generation (grandchildren) questions what to do with “all this stuff”? Often the heirs do not have the expertise, understandably, and are overwhelmed by the financial and other costs of appropriate storage for the permanent preservation of the material.4 How to professionally accommodate, develop and make such collections accessible? In the following, several models for the handling and storage of artist estates are presented, with specific reference to the issues of sifting, recording and selection.

Type
Research Article
Information
Art Libraries Journal , Volume 41 , Issue 1 , January 2016 , pp. 56 - 61
Copyright
Copyright © ARLIS/UK&Ireland 2016 

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Footnotes

1.

The text is based on a paper presented on 24 October 2013 at the symposium “Kulturelles Erbe digital – Bedingungen und Perspektiven”, organized by the prometheus digital image archive in co-operation with the Pausanio Akademie and the University Library Centre in Nord-Rhein Westphalia. http://prometheus-bildarchiv.de/en/tagung2013/index, accessed 12 January 2015.

References

2. The estates of a full range of artists – also including musicians, writers, and performing artists - is described fully in the anthology Special delivery. Von Künstlernachlässen und ihren Verwaltern, edited by V. Hansen et al and published in Bonn by the Arbeitskreis Selbständiger Kultur-Institute in 2011.

3. Gerhard Richter archive in Dresden (Staatliche Kunstsammlungen) is an example, or the Georg-Kolbe-Museum. For the artists' estates that can be found with the Kolbe-estate, see. Jahn, C., “Aus dem Atelier ins Archiv – Künstlernachlässe im Georg-Kolbe-Museum”, AKMB-news 17, 1 (2011): 12–13Google Scholar.

4. A recent publication on this topic: Sladeszek, F.-J. and Sykora, S., After collecting: Leitfaden für den Kunstnachlass. Zurich: Rüffer & Rub, 2013Google Scholar.

5. Archiv der Akademie der Künste http://www.adk.de/de/archiv/aufbau-aufgaben/ [accessed 22 January 2015].

6. For some of the 19th-century estates they hold, see Winter, P.. “Vom Zerreißen und Verbrennen. Genese, Charakter und Bedeutung der Künstler-Nachlässe des 19. Jahrhunderts im Zentralarchiv” in Grabowski, J. und Winter, P., eds., Kunst recherchieren. 50 Jahre Zentralarchiv der Staatlichen Museen zu Berlin, Berlin: Staatliche Museen zu Berlin, 2010: 121–130Google Scholar.

7. Rheinisches Archiv für Künstlernachlässe http://www.rak-bonn.de/ [accessed 16 January 2015].

8. Jooss, B.. “Das Deutsche Kunstarchiv im Germanischen Nationalmuseum, Nürnberg. Vom Umgang mit schriftlichen Nachlässen von Künstler und Kunstwissenschaftlern”, AKMB-news 16, 1 (2010): 16–21Google Scholar.

9. For examples of this expertise, see http://kalliope.staatsbibliothek-berlin.de/ (this explains about the bequests in the libraries) and the Zentrale Datenbank der Nachlässe of the Bundesarchiv includes descriptions of artists' bequests, http://www.nachlassdatenbank.de/ [accessed 16 January 2015].

10. Under this title, Uwe Degreif presented a lecture at a Hamburg symposium (see reference 11 for further information) in which he convincingly pleads for a radical, strict review and selection. My thanks to Uwe Degreif for sharing the lecture manuscript with me and for the permission to quote from it. An interview with him on the same topic can be found in Sladeszek, F.-J. and Sykora, S., After collecting: Leitfaden für den Kunstnachlass. Zurich: Rüffer & Rub, 2013: 155–160Google Scholar.

11. The catalogue for the 10th anniversary exhibition, Forum für Nachlässe von Künstlerinnen und Künstler e.V., eds., Entdeckt und Bewahrt! 10 Jahre Forum für Künstlernachlässe mit einem Querschnitt durch die Sammlung. Hamburg: the Forum, 2013. For the symposium programme, see www.kuenstlernachlaesse.de/projekte/ausstellungen/2013-2/ [accessed 16 January 2015].

12. Museen Nord http://www.museen-sh.de/startseite [accessed 16 January 2015].

13. Künstlernachlässe Mannheim http://www.kuenstlernachlaesse-mannheim.de/ [accessed 16 January 2015].

14. Stiftung Kunstfonds http://www.kunstfonds.de/kuenstlernachlaesse.html [accessed 16 January 2015].

15. Van Ham Art Estate http://www.van-ham.com/van-ham-art-estate.html [accessed 16 January 2015]. Critically reviewed by Christiane Fricke in the Handelsblatt, 20 August 2013. ww.handelsblatt.com/panorama/kunstmarkt/kuenstlernachlaesse-kampf-um-ressourcen/8665614.html [accessed 16 January 2015].

16. [Private] Künstlernachlässe im Land Brandenburg. http://private-kuenstlernachlaesse-brandenburg.de/ [accessed 16 January 2015].