About

What happens to an artist’s work, archives, and ideas when they are gone? Who makes the decisions that drive who and what gets to be remembered? What stories and perspectives are at risk of being lost in times of accelerated cultural erasure? These questions are at the heart of this new report: Creating Future Memory: Building the Field of Artist Legacy Stewardship.

The publication draws on the Joan Mitchell Foundation’s past work and ongoing research in legacy stewardship and is grounded in the perspectives and big ideas shared at the field-wide Creating Future Memory convening, hosted by the Joan Mitchell Foundation in May 2025 at BRIC in Brooklyn, with support from the Mellon Foundation. It offers a picture of a broad, coalescing legacy stewardship ecosystem—the people, practices, and organizations that shape it—alongside its central challenges and most promising opportunities, from emergent models already underway, to possibilities not yet explored.

Highlighting the voices and experiences of over 150 artists, family members, archivists, curators, and legacy professionals, Creating Future Memory calls for broader awareness of legacy work's importance across the field, and advocates for increased training opportunities, funding, and collaboration across every sector of the art world.