If the artist or heirs decide to perpetuate an artistic legacy in the long term and to preserve the artist’s life work in a visible manner, we refer to this as an estate. To establish an estate, the artist and/or heirs develop a specific action plan with the family and other stakeholders, with the potential goal of protecting the legacy, establishing its value and making it accessible to a wide audience. This plan is your estate planning, in which you consider the possibilities for a legacy (now or in the future) and how, for example, the artist’s life and artistic practice can best be preserved. The various components linked to a legacy are also considered, such as the archive, the artist’s oeuvre, their (former) studio and/or home and their intellectual legacy, how you can approach these elements as an artist, heir or stakeholder, and how they can be made more accessible.
In your planning process, it is possible to formalise various decisions linked to the preservation and management of the legacy. The artist can do this during their lifetime, but it can also be done by heirs or other stakeholders. For example, you may try to answer these questions: ‘How do you want to be remembered as an artist?’, ‘How can your work be preserved in the short and long term?’, and ‘What steps can be taken to achieve this?’. Your estate planning offers the opportunity to consider the legacy in a wider context and explore various factors that may be important when establishing, organising and managing your estate and the long-term preservation of your legacy.
As an artist, heir or stakeholder, you can use estate planning to give the artistic legacy a legal meaning and protection. An estate offers perspectives for lasting preservation and management in the short and long term.
Do you want to find out more about estate planning? Explore all the details: ‘Establishing an estate’
TIP: Knowing what you have is the starting point for everything. In the section ‘How to get started with your legacy’, the CKV explains how you can survey the different components of an artistic legacy.
The artistic legacy of Philippe Vandenberg (1952-2005)
In an introductory conversation, the Philippe Vandenberg Foundation told us about the period of establishing the estate, during which they closed the studio and stopped collaborations in order to take the first step towards surveying the artistic legacy. It took them three years to draw up an inventory and photograph the works of art. Once they had a good overview, the Foundation switched to a database and opened up Philippe Vandenberg’s artistic legacy, in order to make exhibitions and research possible again.
(Johannes Muselaers – former employee)
Interested to read more? Go to the next page: Why should you take care of your legacy?