Wednesday, May 14

2:00–5:00 pm • Site Visits

6:00–6:30 pm • Opening Evening, Welcome Remarks
Christa Blatchford, Executive Director of the Joan Mitchell Foundation; Paul Ramírez Jonas, artist and co-president of the Board of Joan Mitchell Foundation; Solana Chehtman, Director of Artist Programs at the Joan Mitchell Foundation

6:30–7:30 pm • How to Become An Ancestor
Artist Amalia Mesa-Bains in conversation with Josh T. Franco, Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art

7:30–8:30 pm • Opening Cocktail

Thursday, May 15

9:00–9:30 am • Breakfast / Check in

9:30–10:00 am • Grounding Remarks

10:00–11:15 am • Who Gets To Be Remembered: Expanding Notions of Value
Chair: Thelma Golden, Studio Museum in Harlem; Sam Gordon, Gordon Robichaux Gallery; Glenn Phillips, Getty Research Institute; Komal Shah, Shah Garg Foundation; Dyani White Hawk, artist

11:15–11:45 am • Coffee Break

11:45 am–1:00 pm • Artists and Estates on Navigating Challenges and Vulnerability

Chair: Chelsea Spengemann, Soft Network and AFELL; Cat Gardère, Paul Gardère Estate; Seitu Ken Jones, artist and founder of The Black Gate; Juan Sánchez, artist

1:00–2:00 pm • Lunchtime Think-In: What would a robust legacy stewardship field look like?

2:00–2:45 pm • Living Legacies: Voices From the Field
with Kwame Brathwaite, Kwame Brathwaite Estate; Teresita Fernández, artist; Theaster Gates, artist (virtually); Francis Greenburger, Art Omi Pavilions; Lisa Le Feuvre, Holt/Smithson Foundation

2:45–4:00 pm • Paradigm Shifts: Centering Diverse Cultural Approaches to Legacy Stewardship
Chair: Ego Ahaiwe Sowinski, artist and archivist; Drew Kahuʻāina Broderick, artist; Whitney Mashburn, curator

4:00–4:30 pm • Coffee Break

4:30–5:15 pm • Creative Legacies: Voices From the Field
Julie Ault, artist; Judy Baca, artist and leader of SPARC (Social & Public Art Resource Center); Steven G. Fullwood, Nomadic Archivist Project; Hailey Loman, LACA; Betty Yu, artist and member of Chinatown Arts Brigade

5:15–5:30 pm • Reflections on the day’s throughlines

Friday, May 16

9:00–9:30 am • Breakfast / Check in

9:30–10:00 am • Grounding Remarks

10:00–11:15 am • Building Ecosystems of Stewardship
Chair: Ryan Flahive, Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA); Kalia Brooks, former Nxthvn; Josh T. Franco, Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art; Alex Klein, The Contemporary Austin; Nicholas Lowe, School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC)

11:15–11:45 am • Coffee Break

11:45 am–1:00 pm • Creative Funding Models

Chair: Úrsula Davila-Villa, Davilla-Villa & Stothart; Ariel Aisiks, Institute for Studies on Latin American Art (ISLAA); Cathleen Chaffee, Buffalo AKG Art Museum; Kyle Croft, Visual Aids; Mikiko Ino, KinoSaito

1:00–2:00 pm • Lunchtime Think-In: How can we realize the legacy field we envision?

2:00–2:45 pm • Collective Stewardship: Voices From the Field

Andrew M. Elder, Roadmap for Participatory Archiving (RoPA) at UMASS; Heather Hart, artist and co-founder of Black Lunch Table; Anita Sharma, Women Artists Archive Miami (virtually); Sreedevi Sripathy, South Asian American Digital Archive (SAADA); Mindy Tousley, Artists Archives of the Western Reserve

2:45–4:00 pm • A Collaborative Approach for the Future of the Field

Chair: Tempestt Hazel, Sixty Inches from Center; Zakiya Collier, archivist; Leslie Cozzi, Baltimore Museum of Art; Antonio D. Lyons, Valerie J. Maynard Foundation; Marilyn Nance, Valerie J. Maynard Foundation

4:00–4:30 pm • Coffee Break

4:30–5:30 pm • Closing Conversation

5:30–6:30 pm • Closing Cocktail

Council Members & Facilitators

The Creating Future Memory convening is curated by Joan Mitchell Foundation Director of Artist Programs Solana Chehtman with Executive Director Christa Blatchford in partnership with national Advisory Council members.

Advisory Council Members

• Lisa Darms, Executive Director at the Hauser and Wirth Institute
• Ryan S. Flahive, archivist at the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA)
• Josh T. Franco, Collector at Large at the Smithsonian’s Archives of American Art
• Tempestt Hazel, Co-Director/Co-Founder of Sixty Inches from Center
• Seitu Ken Jones, artist, with collaborative support of Shannon Burnette, artist and cultural worker
• Chelsea Spengemann, Executive Director of Soft Network

Facilitators

• Morgan Bassichis, comedian, musician, and writer
• Yanira Castro, artist and co-founder of Creating New Futures

Report Writer

• Sharon Mizota, researcher, metadata consultant, and art critic

Documentation & Social Media Policy

Creating Future Memory is a space for open, honest exchange, and we’re committed to protecting that. This event will not be recorded. If you prefer not to be photographed or shared on social media, red dot stickers will be available for your lanyard at check-in. We ask that attendees refrain from recording videos on their phones, and that no quotes from speakers or participants be shared without their explicit permission. Thank you for helping us create a space rooted in care, trust, and respect!

Acknowledgements

Creating Future Memory is organized by Joan Mitchell Foundation with generous support from Mellon Foundation.

About Joan Mitchell Foundation

The Joan Mitchell Foundation cultivates the study and appreciation of artist Joan Mitchell’s life and work, while fulfilling her wish to provide resources and opportunities for visual artists.

As the chief steward of Joan Mitchell’s legacy, the Foundation manages a collection of Mitchell’s artwork and archives containing her personal papers, photographs, sketchbooks, and other historical materials. The Foundation administers copyright and reproduction requests related to Mitchell’s artwork, and regularly partners with institutions to ensure that a wide audience has access to Mitchell’s work through exhibitions, educational activities, and public programming. In 2015, the Foundation established the Joan Mitchell Catalogue Raisonné project, a long-term research project that will result in a scholarly publication documenting the artist’s paintings.

Fulfilling Mitchell’s mandate to “aid and assist” living artists, over the past 31 years the Foundation has evolved a range of initiatives that have directly supported more than 1,300 visual artists at varying stages of their careers. The Joan Mitchell Fellowship gives annual unrestricted awards of $60,000 directly to artists working in the evolving fields of painting and sculpture, with funds distributed over a five-year period alongside learning, peer engagement, and network-building opportunities. The New Orleans-based Joan Mitchell Center hosts residencies for national and local artists, complemented by professional development offerings, open studio events, and other public programs that encourage dialogue and exchange with the local community. The Creating a Living Legacy (CALL) initiative provides free and essential resources to help artists of all ages organize, document, and manage their artworks and careers. Together, these programs actively engage with working artists as they develop and expand their practices.

For more information, visit joanmitchellfoundation.org.

About CALL

Grounded in decades of direct support for artists, and informed by our work as stewards of Joan Mitchell’s legacy, the Creating a Living Legacy (CALL) initiative provides artists with resources and instruction in the areas of career documentation, inventory management, and legacy planning.

After many years working directly with mature artists on career documentation, the Foundation expanded the vision for CALL, making its resources widely available through free workbooks, guides, and case studies, available at joanmitchellfoundation.org, along with CALL/VoCA Talks, a series of in-depth interviews with artists who participated in the CALL program, in partnership with the non-profit Voices In Contemporary Art (VoCA).