Marina Abramović is one of those artists who has never stopped giving the art world something to talk about, from the early provocative performances that pushed the limits of endurance and transformed visceral traumatic catharsis into art to her later shift toward more spiritual and energetic rituals aimed at collective healing and reconnection. Over the decades, she has continued to reinvent the possibilities of performance, turning the body, her own and the audience’s, into a site of vulnerability, transformation and shared experience, in the process becoming both an icon of contemporary art and, in many ways, a shamanic healer for a troubled collectivity. In 2026, Abramović will make history as the first woman to receive a major exhibition at the Galleria dell’Accademia in Venice, which opens at the height of the art calendar during the 61st Venice Biennale. Marking the artist’s 80th birthday, “Marina Abramović: Transforming Energy” will stage a resonant dialogue between her pioneering performance practice and the Renaissance masterpieces that have shaped Venice’s cultural identity. Iconic works such as Imponderabilia (1977), Rhythm 0 (1974), Light/Dark (1977), Balkan Baroque (1997) and Carrying the Skeleton (2008) will appear alongside projections of early performances. One of the central highlights will be Abramović and Ulay’s Pietà (1983) shown in direct dialogue with Titian’s final unfinished Pietà (c. 1575-76), an unprecedented historic pairing that reframes Renaissance themes of grief, transcendence and redemption through a contemporary lens while underscoring the body’s enduring role as a site of suffering and spiritual elevation. Curated by Shai Baitel, artistic director of the Modern Art Museum (MAM) Shanghai, in close collaboration with the artist, the exhibition will unfold across both the museum’s permanent collection galleries and its temporary exhibition spaces, a first in the institution’s history, embedding Abramović’s work deep within the city’s artistic patrimony. At its core, “Transforming Energy” is an encounter between past and present, material and immaterial, body and spirit, revealing how Abramović’s lifelong exploration of endurance, presence and transformation resonates powerfully within Venice’s centuries-old visual language.
The Truck Trio as shown in “Walter De Maria: The Singular Experience.” Courtesy Gagosian
Earlier this month, Gagosian debuted a stunning show featuring the work of Walter de Maria at its Le Bourget gallery in Paris. “Walter De Maria: The Singular Experience” was curated by Donna De Salvo and featured at its heart The Truck Trilogy, a trio of vintage Chevrolet pickup trucks outfitted with De Maria’s signature stainless-steel rods. The work was conceived in 2011 and completed in 2017, four years after De Maria’s death at the age of 77.
This was the same year that the gallery launched its “Building a Legacy Program,” which marshals the gallery’s extensive resources to ensure that artists remain in the minds of the public in the future, whether they are young, old, or deceased, through educational efforts and ambitious shows like “The Singular Experience.” The program has been spearheaded by Kara Vander Weg, a managing director at the gallery, whom we caught up with to hear more about its origins and processes.
How did the idea for the Building a Legacy Program originate in 2017, and what gaps in artist or estate planning was it meant to address?
KVW: The catalyst was Walter De Maria, an artist who had been close to the gallery since the 1980s, dying in 2013 without a will. The lack of preparation threw his estate into turmoil but, fortunately, the gallery was able to help address a number of immediate practical needs, including preserving and documenting his archives. Nuanced decisions had to be made about his intentions and his work, including how it was displayed. Walter was incredibly precise and exacting, and to go from his presence, a resource that was always there, to nothing was a profound shock, particularly for Elizabeth Childress, who had managed his studio for decades.
Through our work with the Richard Avedon Foundation, which began in 2011, we learned a lot about the challenges and questions they faced when Dick had died suddenly several decades earlier. It has been instructive to learn about their organization, which is impressive, and implemented processes for decision-making as the artist would have wished.
Through our work with artists and with their subsequent estates and foundations—which is inevitable when working together over many years—we have seen that balancing an artist’s legacy with ongoing operational concerns can be incredibly challenging. As much as the gallery, as an entity outside of the family or studio, can be helpful, we want to be. For all artists, it is ideal to have some plans for legacy decisions in place. And as the value of art has grown, it has become even more important to have detailed wishes outlined, particularly when it comes to decisions like posthumous work, as well as planning for the resources necessary to carry an artist’s legacy forward.
A symposium felt like the right way to address some of these delicate topics and provide a space for knowledge sharing between our artists and others. Peer-to-peer support can be an exceptionally helpful resource, and many of the connections that have been made through the symposia continue to be fruitful for the artists and estates.
The team behind Gagosian Quarterly also saw an opportunity to address many of the questions on people’s minds through thoughtful content in the magazine. We launched an ongoing series featuring conversations with experts in the field of artists’ estates and legacy stewardship who offer insights that hopefully prove useful to artists, their staff, foundations and estates, scholars, and others.
In working with estates like Walter De Maria’s or Nam June Paik’s, what have been the most revealing challenges in realizing an artist’s intentions after death?
KVW: Honoring an artist’s wishes and intentions is always the biggest challenge.
With Walter, we’ve had to make decisions about how to install his work at a level he would have permitted. Fortunately, both Larry [Gagosian] and I worked closely with him and have those experiences to draw on. We also owe a great debt to Elizabeth Childress for her constant counsel. For example, Walter was always incredibly precise about the surface on which his floor sculptures rested; it had to be completely unmarked. For an exhibition at our 21st Street gallery while he was still alive, I remember we had to bring in a trompe l’oeil painter to touch up marks on the concrete floor before he would agree to go ahead with the show. And for the current exhibition at Le Bourget, we had to find solutions to address the floor beneath 13, 14, 15 Meter Rows. These might seem like small things, but we know how critical they were to Walter.
He was also very resistant to putting out too much information about his work, because he wanted viewers to have a focused, unmediated experience of it. The downside is that, as a result, people haven’t really come to understand the thinking behind his practice. That’s why, for the Le Bourget exhibition, curator Donna De Salvo has included a number of drawings, some of which have never been seen before, something that would never have happened during his lifetime. Our hope is that this will offer the wider public a way into Walter’s thinking: his precision, a bit of his humor, and the connections between his early work and the later pieces for which he became known. These are things we believe are important, not only for his legacy, but also for the scholarship around his work.
The circumstances of our work on behalf of Nam June Paik are very different, and my colleague Nick Simunovic is best placed to talk about it. [Writer’s note: They wanted Nick to jump in here so I said why not.]
NS: In the case of Nam June Paik, we partnered with the Estate, who had a clear sense of the artist’s wishes, and we worked tirelessly over a decade to realize a number of important goals.
When we began working with the Estate in 2015, they were keen to work with a major gallery as a way to shine a spotlight on Nam June’s work, particularly given that the last exhibition sanctioned by the artist was 20 years prior. Larry [Gagosian] had noted that he felt that the artist was a bit lost in the market, and that was a view shared by the family. There was also a realization that there were gaps in the holdings of American museums.
We laid out a multi-tiered plan that began with that first show in Hong Kong in 2015 and culminated with a major survey in New York planned for 2020. The opening was delayed by the COVID pandemic but eventually opened in 2022.
We brought in noted curator John G. Hanhardt, who also organized the retrospectives of the artist’s work at the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (1982), and the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington, DC (2011), in addition to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York (2000). We were able to strategize and execute against the artist’s wishes because we had clear direction from the Estate, including Nam June’s nephew Ken Hakuta, and input from partners like John Hanhardt and Estate curator Jon Huffman.
As a result of those efforts, works by the artist from that 2022 exhibition were placed with major museums including The Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Guggenheim Abu Dhabi, the Hirshhorn Museum & Sculpture Garden, and the Bass Museum of Art, filling a crucial gap in the artist’s canon and legacy.
How do you balance market considerations with curatorial or scholarly fidelity when guiding legacy work inside a commercial gallery?
KVW: The two are interconnected and I don’t think that is a bad thing, work needs to be placed with owners to ensure the highest level of scholarly fidelity. And good curatorial work can help to bolster an artist’s market.
The monograph Gagosian published for Walter De Maria is a great example. Little scholarly work had been done on his life, and through our work preserving the archive, we had an opportunity and the ability to take on the project. We had access to rarely seen archival material from his studio and the result is the first comprehensive survey of the artist’s entire oeuvre that explores both his creative career and his personal life.
It was a massive undertaking that was many years in the making, but the publication will support both future sales and exhibitions of his work. It has already served as the catalogue for the Menil Collection’s 2022-23 exhibition, Walter De Maria: Boxes for Meaningless Work.
The recent symposium in London gathered artists, curators, and foundation directors. What insights or points of friction surfaced about the future of legacy stewardship?
KVW: It was our third symposium on the topic of legacy planning, and there was a fascinating session during which I spoke with Mary Dean, Ed Ruscha’s studio director; Waltraud Forelli, Anselm Kiefer’s studio director and board member of the Eschaton–Anselm Kiefer Foundation; and Vladimir Yavachev, director of operations for the Christo and Jeanne-Claude Foundation. A key takeaway from our conversation was the critical importance of hiring an archivist, ideally while an artist is alive.
Waltraud rightly pointed out that in addition to helping from an organizational perspective, hiring an archivist brought a realization that they couldn’t do everything alone. They needed to plan for a younger generation to continue their work and to take the time now to transfer that knowledge. For Vladimir, who has catalogue raisonné preparations underway, an archivist is particularly important given the volume of material that Christo and Jeanne-Claude retained.
Mary Dean emphasized another important point, the value of openness, even when addressing a sensitive topic like planning for a future one won’t be part of. For Ed, this is a living, evolving process that he actively engages in through the thoughtful placement of his works and archival material with institutional partners. For instance, the Getty Museum is currently in the process of receiving his street photograph archive. All of his films and artistbook archives are housed at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas, Austin. He has also made significant donations: Ed was born in Omaha, Nebraska, so the Joslyn Art Museum has a substantial collection of his work, and he has donated work to the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art in Oklahoma City.
Younger artists such as Titus Kaphar are building institutions during their lifetimes. How is the conversation about legacy changing for living artists?
KVW: There is a generation of artists today who are interested in philanthropic endeavors beyond their own artistic practices. Providing space and resources for the creation of foundations and community projects is a big priority and perhaps is an indication of legacy planning taking shape much earlier in artists’ careers.
There is a tradition of artists stepping up and supporting other artists, one example is Theaster Gates, who has devoted the past 15 years to his Rebuild Foundation. It’s a mantle that artists including Ellen Gallagher and Titus Kaphar are taking up with projects like the Nina Simone House and NXTHVN, respectively.
But this process isn’t new, there is a history of artist support with someone like Robert Rauschenberg, who during his lifetime formed an entity to help other artists, as did Roy Lichtenstein.
For galleries, support of an artist needs to evolve to include these priorities, which could be advice around the organization of studio resources or the make-up of a Board of Directors.
With “The Singular Experience” now open in Paris, featuring De Maria’s Truck Trilogy and 13, 14, 15 Meter Rows, what does this presentation demonstrate about Gagosian’s collaboration with the De Maria Estate? What are the lessons there for other artists planning their estate?
KVW: The relationship with Walter has always been very personal, his friendship and working relationship with Larry [Gagosian] stretches back more than 35 years, and it has anchored our long commitment to him and his work.
The approach is methodical and takes time, but the exhibition at Le Bourget is a product of that commitment. It’s his second show in the space and one that we had actually begun discussing before he died in 2013.
Showing Truck Trilogy outside of the United States for the first time is incredibly exciting. It was his last sculpture, conceived in 2011 and completed posthumously in 2017 according to his specific directions, so it touches on a lot of what we have talked about. It’s also wonderful to be showing 13, 14, 15 Meter Rows at the same time as his inclusion in the exhibition “Minimal,” curated by Dia Art Foundation’s director Jessica Morgan at the Bourse de Commerce, Paris. And it’s all taking place in the same month as Walter would have turned 90.
But the exhibitions are just one piece in a broader program that aims to cement and extend his legacy, from placing a group of early sculpture and drawings with The Menil Collection (a family that were early champions of the artist) and working with Dia Art Foundation to help conserve The Lightning Field to working tirelessly to publish his monograph. And the work continues as we try to find a home for his archive.
For artists working today, it can be hard to have the patience to play the long game, but that thought and planning is key. It can also be useful to talk with other artists and studios who are focused on this work. One of the benefits from the symposium was the exchange of ideas and the conversations that happened outside the sessions.
Looking across the gallery’s roster, what qualities distinguish the artists who are most intentional about shaping their own legacies while still alive? What do they have in common?
KVW: They have a clear sense of purpose regarding the direction of their work and its legacy. They like control, either maintaining it themselves or wisely bringing in the right studio leadership. They’ve built strong museum connections and have access to resources in terms of staff and space. It’s a reminder of the symbiotic relationship between the market and legacy, artists need resources to actively plan for the future.
When it comes to gifts for art lovers, wrapping original art is the ultimate power move. But here’s the catch: collectors pour their hearts—and usually their bank accounts—into curating deeply personal collections. If you know your giftee very, very well, a piece of art can be a very, very good gift. You could also treat the collector in your life to a gallery outing or surprise them with a session with an art advisor. But if adding to their collection feels too ambitious, there are plenty of artsy presents for everyone on your list, from the absolute obsessive to the casually cultured. Whether you’re working with a shoestring budget or aiming for extravagance, there’s no shortage of options that are thoughtful, stylish and primed to impress. Enjoy our guide to the gifts guaranteed to thrill any art enthusiast.
There are many signs that the art world has reached the end of an era, and the passing of arts patron and philanthropist Agnes Gund on Friday, September 19 is one of the most definitive. Her death marks the departure of an entire generation of committed collectors, leaving the industry to grapple with who will step into their place and sustain a system that has grown vast and unwieldy.
A relentless supporter of art and culture, Gund was among the most influential U.S. patrons of the past half-century (even taking a spot on our 2023 Business of Art Power List). As president emerita of the Museum of Modern Art, where she served as president for more than 11 years, she played a transformative role in expanding the museum’s reach and collection, directly helping raise the funds that made its most recent expansion possible.
She sat on numerous boards, supported generations of artists and championed art as a tool for education, equity and systemic change. She reportedly gave away two-thirds of her assets each year to sustain New York’s cultural life and was a fixture at galas, including those of El Museo del Barrio, YoungArts, The Kitchen and MoMA PS1, where she was seen this summer.
Gund had already donated hundreds of works to MoMA, which honored her with the exhibition “Studio Visit: Selected Gifts from Agnes Gund,” showcasing around 50 of the more than 800 works she gave. In total, over 900 artworks from her collection have been gifted or promised to public institutions nationwide. As for what’s left, it remains to be seen which auction house will secure this trophy estate.
She was also a longtime advocate for arts education and social justice. In 1977 she founded “Studio in a School,” an innovative program that placed professional artists in New York public schools, inspiring tens of thousands of children. She extended her civic influence by serving on the New York State Council on the Arts and as chair of the Cultural Affairs Advisory Commission of New York City.
In 2017 she sold her beloved Roy Lichtenstein Masterpiece to hedge fund investor Steven Cohen for $165 million to launch Art for Justice, a catalytic six-year fund targeting the racial inequities of mass incarceration. The fund sunsetted in 2023 after distributing more than $127 million in grants. “Agnes is not done,” Helena Huang, Art for Justice’s project director, told Observer at the time, noting Gund’s growing focus on reproductive rights and her enduring concern for the state of the world.
In November 2023 she sold another Lichtenstein, directing more than $2 million to the Groundswell Fund, which advocates for reproductive rights, and to Michigan’s Reproductive Freedom for All ballot measure. “She would say that there’s less art to sell,” Huang commented, when asked whether Gund would continue parting with works for charity. “But she’ll continue to leverage everything that she has.”
Who was Agnes Gund?
Agnes Gund was born on August 13, 1938 in Cleveland. Her father, George Gund II, built a fortune in real estate, brewing and investing and served as president of the Cleveland Trust Company, Ohio’s largest bank. After his death in 1966, she inherited a substantial trust and soon purchased a Henry Moore sculpture, beginning what would grow into a collection of some 2,000 works.
Her passion for art began in childhood with visits to the Cleveland Museum of Art and deepened at Miss Porter’s School in Farmington, Conn., where she enrolled after her mother’s death in 1954. “I had a magical art history teacher who didn’t just give you the artist’s name and the date of the picture; she showed you how to look at artwork,” she told Lifestyles magazine in 2010.
Gund graduated from Connecticut College for Women (now Connecticut College) in 1960 with a degree in history. Three years later she married Albrecht “Brec” Saalfield, a private-school teacher and heir to the Saalfield Publishing Company. The marriage ended in divorce, as did a second marriage to Daniel Shapiro, a lawyer and teacher. She had four children with Saalfield—Catherine, David, Anna and Jessica—and is also survived by her brothers Gordon and Geoffrey Gund, her sister, the theater producer Louise Gund, and 12 grandchildren.
The passing of Agnes Gund leaves a profound void in New York’s art world and beyond, sharpening the question of who will carry forward the work of her generation and ensure the future of cultural patronage.
UBS, a Switzerland-based global financial services firm, is drawing from its art collection to show more than 40 works by British painter Lucian Freud. The pieces will be collectively displayed for the first time in the U.S. in Lucian Freud: Works from the UBS Art Collection, which opened yesterday (Feb. 1) at the firm’s New York gallery.
Known as one of the great portraitists of his era, Freud specialized in figurative art and is the grandson of psychoanalysis founder Sigmund Freud. The UBS show is largely dominated by his late etchings. Created by Freud using an unconventional process that involved propping up etching plates on easels, they range from still lifes and landscapes to portraits and nudes. Two of the artist’s oil paintings, his 1990 Double Portrait and 1999 Head of a Naked Girl, are also included in the exhibition.
“We are pleased to share with the public this exceptional body of work, which defies perceived norms of corporate collecting,” said Mary Rozell, global head of the UBS Art Collection, in a statement. “Like most of Freud’s oeuvre, the artworks on display are uncompromising and challenging to view, and we hope they will spark both conversation and introspection.”
The free exhibition is taking place in the UBS Art Gallery, which is in the lobby of the firm’s New York headquarters on 1285 Avenue of the Americas. Opened in 2019, the gallery is home to permanent installations with work by artists like Frank Stella, Sarah Morris, Fred Eversley and Howard Hodgkin and hosts three to four annual rotating exhibitions.
In addition to its Freud works, the UBS Art Collection contains more than 30,000 contemporary pieces by artists like Jean-Michel Basquiat, Roy Lichtenstein, Ed Ruscha and Cindy Sherman. Having first started collecting contemporary art in the 1960s, the firm now often loans out its work to major institutions including New York’s Museum of Modern Art, the Smithsonian American Art Museum and London’s National Portrait Gallery.
UBS has been managing $5.5 trillion worth of invested assets since its 2023 acquisition of Credit Suisse (CS), which had its own 10,000-piece corporate art collection. In addition to the pieces hanging in its gallery, UBS displays its art holdings across its global offices to both boost morale and impress clients.It is also affiliated with art fair behemoth Art Basel, acting as its global lead partner and co-publishing reports on the art market and collecting activity.
The UBS Art Gallery is located in the lobby of the company’s New York headquarters. Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images
Financial service companies and corporate art collections
While UBS’s vast collection of contemporary art might come as a surprise, financial service companies have long been some of the most active art patrons. The modern corporate art collection as we know it was pioneered by David Rockefeller. In 1959, while serving as president of Chase Manhattan Bank, he began accumulating artwork under the “Art at Work” program. Now known as JPMorgan Chase (JPM), the company’s collection is among the most well-established of any financial services company and helped create a new way for banks to display their ability to manage wealth.
“What’s most important about our collection is not how much we’ve accumulated, but what, in the process of living with art for the past four decades, we’ve learned,” wrote William B. Harrison, Jr., then Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of JP Morgan Chase, in the forward of Art At Work: Forty Years of the JP Morgan Chase Collection.
From the Royal Bank of Canada to Spain’s CaixaBank, corporate art collections have become a globally accepted cultural phenomenon. One of the more significant holdings includes the 60,000 works owned by Bank of America (BAC), which focuses on contemporary artists and has hosted shared exhibitions with nearly 200 museums worldwide. Deutsche Bank (DB) houses much of its 57,000-piece collection in the Deutsche Bank Towers in Frankfurt, where art is arranged by region and entire floors of the 60-story towers are devoted to singular artists. And that’s not all. According to the International Art Alliance, there are more than a thousand major corporate art collections around the globe.
