Digital access

A good way to open up your artistic legacy and make it accessible to a wider audience is to enable people to find the legacy online and search within it. Ways to do this include building a website or using other communication channels, such as a blog or social media (e.g. Instagram or Facebook). These platforms can serve as a calling card for your artistic legacy, a place where you can make the activities relating to the legacy visible with the aim of reaching as wide an audience as possible.

On this page

Website

One of the most prevalent ways of making your artistic legacy accessible online is by building a website. This is a way to make the artist’s life, work and artistic practice(s) visible. You can also communicate about the activities surrounding the legacy and future exhibitions and projects.

There are certain pages and types of information that we find very frequently on websites, specifically:

  • Biography – a short summary of the artist’s life and their artistic practices.
  • Bibliography – a simple overview of publications and books, articles and other documents about the artist’s life and work, which provides a handy research tool.
  • List of works (portfolio) – an overview or selection of a few key works from the artist’s artistic career. Photographing and presenting the work at a professional standard gives visitors the chance to experience, appreciate and draw inspiration from it.
  • Exhibitions – a list of solo and group exhibitions shows how active and involved the artist was on the arts scene. You can supplement this with a list of the (main) works by the artist in public collections.
  • News and events – an overview of planned activities encourages website visitors to attend one of these events and admire the legacy in real life.
  • Contact – an accessible contact page is essential for interested parties to be able to contact the managers of the legacy.

It is up to you how you structure the website and what information you provide. Would you prefer a blog-like structure or a website organised around various photographs? Either is fine. Give your creativity free rein!

TIP: Think carefully about what you are going to communicate and how. Consider the different components of the legacy, the rights to the documents and the privacy of the people portrayed or mentioned. Digital access offers the opportunity to present your artistic legacy in its entirety. Look for inspiring examples! How have other legacies tackled this issue? And what can you learn from them?

TIP: There are many free software programs with website development tools that you can use to make your website. Do note that a website requires time and resources, especially for acquiring the knowledge you need and for maintaining the website.

Artistieke nalatenschap van beeldende kunstenaar Raphaël Buedts (1946-2009)

The CKV is supporting and advising the family of the visual artist Raphaël Buedts  in surveying Buedts’ artistic legacy and giving access to it. To increase its visibility, the heirs are working on a website focusing on the artist’s life and work. This is an important first step towards activation, a goal that you can work towards over time.

Link to their website: Home – Raphaël Buedts (only available in Dutch). 

Archive Raphaël Buedts. Photo: CKV (2022).

Other (digital) communication channels

Besides developing a website, we see that other platforms, such as Wikipedia, Facebook and Instagram, are used increasingly often in practice as communication tools. These are highly visual channels for giving access to the artist’s work and involving a large group of people.

Some databases also include the possibility in their package to use their platforms to build a website. This may be a useful way to store all the information together in one place. Some useful databases are FileMaker Pro, Coeli, Artlogic, , etc.

  • Do note that not all databases are equally user-friendly, and that they require time and (financial) resources.

 

TIP: When surveying your artistic legacy, it is essential to think in advance about the platform you intend to use to make the legacy accessible. This will partly determine your working process.

TIP: Work out what the specific needs are for surveying the artistic legacy. Compare these needs to what the database offers. Many databases also offer a try-out period, which allows you to explore and evaluate the possibilities yourself.

To make the material in your artistic legacy digitally accessible, the rights to the documents and material must be clarified. For tips and tricks, see the page ‘Clarifying rights’ in this guide. For more practical tips and tricks, check the section on ‘How to get started with the legacy?’.

Interested to read more? Go to the next page: Other forms of access. 

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