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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.
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Dan Duray
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