Creative Funding Models

Legacy stewardship is vital, enduring work—yet it remains one of the least visibly supported areas of the art field. The care of an artist’s legacy, oeuvre, and archive requires deep and sustained resources that often fall outside the bounds of traditional funding models that prioritize the immediate, the tangible, and the new.

This conversation brings together organizations and initiatives that are reimagining how legacy work can be resourced and maintained. Panelists will reflect on the challenges of securing support for long-term care and preservation, and share how they’ve navigated these constraints through inventive strategies, collective advocacy, and values-driven funding models. Together, they will explore what it means to build an infrastructure of support that honors the depth and duration of legacy work—and what it might take to create a more durable and sustainable economy of care for the artists shaping our cultural memory.

SPEAKER BIOS

Úrsula Davila-Villa (Session Chair)

Úrsula Davila-Villa is the co-founder of Davila-Villa & Stothart (DVS), which focuses on supporting the artistic legacies of artists and families whose work has been historically marginalized or considered unconventional. Her previous roles include being a Partner at Alexander Gray Associates gallery from 2012 to 2017 and Associate Curator of Latin American Art at The Blanton Museum of Art at The University of Texas at Austin from 2005 to 2012. In 2012, she co-curated El Panal/ The Hive: Third Poli/Gráfica Triennal of San Juan de Puerto Rico. She holds an MA in Museum Studies from New York University and a BA in architecture and urbanism from the Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey, Mexico, Université Laval, Quebec, Canada, and the Delft University of Technology, Netherlands. A trustee of the Lorraine O’Grady Trust, Úrsula previously served on the boards of VisualAIDS and Women's Studio Workshop, and is currently a board member of ArtTable.

Ariel Aisiks

Ariel Aisiks is the Founder of the Institute for Studies on Latin American Art (ISLAA), a New York-based nonprofit dedicated to advancing the visibility and scholarship of Latin American modern and contemporary art. Through exhibitions at ISLAA’s Tribeca space and partnerships with institutions such as the Dia Art Foundation, CCS Bard, and the Institute of Fine Arts at NYU, Aisiks has fostered new research, academic programs, and museum exhibitions that expand Latin American art’s representation in the United States. Under his leadership, ISLAA has supported hundreds of lectures, symposia, publications, and curatorial initiatives, while contributing important artworks to major museum collections. He has also led efforts to preserve and promote the legacies of key artists, including Jaime Davidovich, helping establish Latin American art as a vital field within global art history discourse.

Cathleen Chaffee

Cathleen Chaffee is the Charles Balbach Chief Curator at the Buffalo AKG Art Museum, where she also stewards of the estate of Marisol (1930–2016), entrusted to the AKG by the artist upon her death. Among her major traveling exhibition projects are Marisol: A Retrospective (2023–25); Stanley Whitney: How High the Moon (2023–25); and Tony Conrad: A Retrospective (2018–19). She co-curated Stanley Whitney: The Italian Paintings, a collateral event at the 59th Venice Biennale in 2022. She previously held curatorial positions at the Yale University Art Gallery, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, and the Cleveland Museum of Art. She has written and lectured widely on contemporary artists and topics including language in Minimal and Conceptual art, the representation of labor in postwar art, and artist-curated exhibitions. She received her PhD from the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University.

Kyle Croft

Kyle Croft is the Executive Director of Visual AIDS. In his seven years with the organization, he has worked to preserve the legacies of artists lost to AIDS and support a global community of artists living with HIV. He is organizing the exhibition Ministry: Reverend Joyce McDonald, opening this July at the Bronx Museum, and has edited volumes on Darrel Ellis, Frederick Weston, and William Olander. He holds an MA in Art History from Hunter College.

Mikiko Ino

Mikiko Ino was born in Japan and established the fashion buying consulting company, LLJ USA Inc., there in 1990. She later moved to New York City where she continued to work with high-end designers like Jason Wu and Oscar De La Renta and introduced them to Japanese retailers. In 2007, Mikiko met and later married Kikuo Saito. Following Saito’s death in 2016, she founded KinoSaito in 2018 while continuing to work in fashion merchandising and managing her late husband’s NYC studio/estate.