How best to manage artists’ estates was among the topical issues discussed at Art Basel in June, when leading dealers presented works by Mike Kelley, Joan Mitchell and Josef Albers among others that were fresh to the market. Flavin Judd, the co-president of the Judd Foundation and son of the late artist Donald Judd, revealed how he and his sister inherited “$200 in the bank, a debt of $10m” and the responsibility of preserving their father’s art, archive and property in Marfa, Texas, and New York. He welcomed a new book due to be published in July by Loretta Würtenberger, the founder of the Berlin-based Institute for Artists’ Estates.
Offering support for artists and their heirs, Würtenberger said that an estate is one of the last works of art an artist makes. She manages the estate of the German-French poet-artist Hans (Jean) Arp and his first wife and fellow Dada founder, Sophie Taeuber-Arp. Major Hans Arp shows are being planned by the Kröller-Müller Museum in the Netherlands for 2017 and by the Nasher Sculpture Center in Dallas for 2018. Würtenberger is organising an international conference on artists’ estates in Berlin in September; The Art Newspaper will be reporting from the event.
