Possible costs for your estate include: staffing costs, rental (of storage for the collection, archive and studio), maintenance, publication costs, taxes, outsourcing of your accountancy, care of the collection and archive (packaging material, restoration, etc.), insurance, transport costs, IT support (for a digital archive, database, website, etc.), having the work photographed and additional administrative costs.
- Think carefully about the possible expenditure involved in establishing and running your estate and the cost of storage space. Also bear the following questions in mind: ‘Is this a one-off cost or a fixed cost (e.g. a monthly or annual one)?’, ‘is it possible to spread it over a longer period?’ Include this information in your financial plan or summary.
Example: costs of a workplace and storage space:
Where is the legacy stored? For this expenditure, consider the place where it is stored, where the legacy (oeuvre and archive) is kept, and whether this can continue over a longer period. It may be an internal storage area, such as your house, the artist’s former home or studio, or other property. But you might also use an external storage facility. Either way, you will need to consider long-term costs such as rental, fixed costs (electricity, heating, water, etc.) and the costs of preserving the legacy in the long term. Some of the devices purchased need maintenance, so maintenance costs are also involved here.
Once you have a suitable place for the legacy, you can think about what you need for long-term preservation: what materials are required for storage of the archive and oeuvre (labels, stickers, cabinets, shelving, etc.)? What system do you plan to use for your inventory of the archive, and what costs are involved? You can enter these costs as an investment, which also means looking for possible financing.
- Investigate your expenditure, perhaps requesting quotations to get more information, and include these in the financial plan. Make sure you check this plan regularly and allow it to grow with your organisation.
A few ways of limiting possible expenditure, specifically staffing costs, are to use internal skills, to allow family, friends, acquaintances and volunteers to support you and to engage in partnerships with universities, local councils and organisations, for example.
Depending on the internal skills and capacities available, you can determine whether you can do some things yourself, such as keeping accounts, photography or IT support. These things can also be done by a network of family members, friends, acquaintances, volunteers and professional contacts or, for example, by the friends of your estate. You can look at your own network as an heir or stakeholder, as well as the artist’s own network, to see who might usefully be involved in establishing the estate. Using the skills of people from your immediate network offers the opportunity to share the task of looking after the legacy and to bring in extra skills.
- Contact the galleries that the artist worked with to promote the work and ask about opportunities for a possible partnership with the estate.
To limit staffing costs, you can also work with universities or local services such as a heritage working group (Erfgoedcel) or an intercommunal heritage building service (IOED). Besides support with the content of the legacy, working with students or volunteers may be beneficial for practical matters such as conservation. It is also possible to offer the legacy for academic research through these partnerships, and to make it accessible to a wider audience. Consider participation in the annual Heritage Day or Monument Day, for example. Opportunities for partnerships are considered in more detail on the ‘Partnerships’ page. Also check the section on ‘Giving access to your legacy’ for more information.
- Consider local interest from the surrounding community and its vision of visual art. Think about how the activities of the estate could respond to this.
Fortunately, there are sources of income as well as expenditure for the various components of your legacy, such as the artist’s oeuvre. They include the following options:
The sale of works from the legacy may provide your own source of income. It is recommended here to divide the legacy (the artist’s oeuvre) into four categories: A, B, C and D. Category A is the core collection in the legacy, the key works that are representative of the life and work of the artist. Category B includes the works that can be sold or donated to public institutions such as museums. Category C are the works that can be sold on the art market or to private collections. When selling works, you will need to find a good balance and the right time to sell. Clearly this has to do with the artist’s position on the market and the time when the estate is established. The last category is D, for the works you have disclaimed or distributed among the family.
- A consideration linked to this is buying back works that were sold in the past by the estate or the artist, because they now turn out to belong in the core collection. These key works can then be used as loans for exhibitions or for publications to make the life and work of the artist accessible to the public.
For some media such as sculptures, graphic work, photography or video art, it is also possible to go on producing ‘new’ work after the artist’s death. The right to do this depends on the applicable copyrights. It is also advisable to consider the artist’s wishes in this respect. It needs to be clear which works were made during the artist’s life, and which were made afterwards, by stating a year of production.
- Reproducing works of art has an influence on the art market. Rare works of art are more valuable, so flooding the market with copies will have a negative effect. Consider carefully what choices you make and maybe bear in mind the division of the oeuvre into categories.