Artists and Estates on Navigating Challenges and Vulnerability

The work of managing an artist’s legacy is fraught with complexity—emotionally, practically, and institutionally. This panel explores the challenges faced by both artists and estates leaders (be them family members or professionals) as they navigate the delicate balance between preserving an artist's life’s work and addressing the deeply personal and often unspoken vulnerabilities involved.

From the inherent emotional weight of legacy stewardship to the practical hurdles of legal, financial, and logistical decision-making, the panel reflects on the multifaceted nature of this work. How can we create systems of support that honor both the creative and human aspects of legacy work?

SPEAKER BIOS

Chelsea Spengemann (Session Chair)

Chelsea Spengemann is the Executive Director of Soft Network, a nonprofit she co-founded in 2021, which includes the professional resource group AFELL (Artist Foundations and Estate Leaders List), co-founded by Spengemann in 2019. Spengemann has overseen the Stan VanDerBeek Archive since 2008. In 2019, she co-curated VanDerBeek + VanDerBeek with Sara VanDerBeek at the Black Mountain College Museum + Arts Center, NC. Spengemann was the curator for Becoming Disfarmer in 2014 and The Instant as Image in 2016, both for the Neuberger Museum of Art at SUNY Purchase. She has an MFA in Photography from Bard College, an MA in Art History from Purchase College, and in 2019, completed the Aspen Institute Seminar for Artist Endowed Foundation Leaders.

Cat Gardère

Cat Gardère is the daughter of Haitian-born American artist Paul Gardère and currently serves as Director of his Brooklyn estate studio to steward her father’s legacy in the art world and avail his work for scholarship. Paul Gardère, who was born in Port-au-Prince in 1944 and died in NYC in 2011, created mixed-media works reflecting the complex interplay of Haitian, French, and American cultures, which comprised his lived experience and explored the legacy of their historical confrontations. In addition to her Director role, Cat is also a seasoned Creative Producer specializing in post-production, having worked with esteemed lens-based artists to print and coordinate global exhibitions, publish fine art books, and tackle editing, color, and visual effects for television and feature-length film projects, as well as managed the studios and archives of late-stage photographers early in her career. Her broad, multidisciplinary experience gives her a unique and intimate view into management of a wide variety of artists and their work at numerous stages of life and career.

Seitu Ken Jones

Seitu Ken Jones (b. 1951) is an artist based in Saint Paul, MN, whose interdisciplinary practice works to restore our Beloved communities by blending art, food, conversation, and beauty. Working on his own or in collaboration, Jones has created over 40 large-scale public art works. He's been awarded a Minnesota State Arts Board Fellowship, a McKnight Visual Artist Fellowship, a Bush Artist Fellowship, a Bush Leadership Fellowship, and a National Endowment for the Arts - Theater Communication Group Designer Fellowship. Seitu was awarded a Loeb Fellowship at the Harvard Graduate School of Design and was an Artist-in-Residence in the Harvard Ceramics Program. He was Millennium Artist-in-Residence for 651 Arts in Brooklyn, NY, and was the first Artist-in-Residence for the City of Minneapolis. In 2014, he integrated artwork into three key stations for the Greenline Light Rail Transit in the Twin Cities. A 2013 Joyce Award, from Chicago's Joyce Foundation, allowed Seitu to develop CREATE: the Community Meal, a dinner for 2,000 people at a table a half a mile long. He is the recipient of the 2017 Distinguished Artist Award from the McKnight Foundation. His 2017 HeARTside Community Meal in Grand Rapids, MI, was awarded the Grand Juried Prize for ArtPrize Nine. Seitu has a BS in Landscape Design and an MLS in Environmental History from the University of Minnesota.

Juan Sánchez

Painter, photographer, printmaker, and video artist Juan Sánchez was born to immigrant working-class Puerto Rican parents in Brooklyn, New York. He is part of a generation of artists-such as Coco Fusco, Guillermo Gómez-Peña, Pepón Osorio, and Papo Colo-who in the 1980s and '90s explored questions of ethnic, racial, and national identity in their work. Among numerous group exhibitions in national and international gallery and museum venues, Sánchez had solo exhibitions at BRIC Arts/Media House, P.S.1/MoMA Contemporary Art Center, El Museo del Barrio, Exit Art, Bronx Museum of the Arts, the 5th Havana Biennale, and El Museo de Historia, Antropologia y Arte, Universidad de Puerto Rico. Among several permanent collections, his art is in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Whitney Museum of American Art, Museum of Modern Art, El Museo del Barrio, and The Smithsonian Museum of American Art. Sánchez has been awarded grants and fellowships from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation, the Joan Mitchell Foundation, New York Foundation for the Arts, the Pollock-Krasner Foundation, and the National Endowment for the Arts. Sánchez earned a BFA from The Cooper Union School of Art and a MFA from the Mason Gross School of the Arts of Rutgers University. He is Professor of Art at Hunter College in New York City.