Living Legacies: Voices From the Field

This session features five brief presentations from artists, estate leaders, and organizations, each sharing their unique experiences navigating legacy stewardship. Presenters will offer a range of perspectives on the meaning of legacy, the importance and complexities of this work, and the values that have guided them, highlighting innovative approaches, key obstacles they’ve faced, and the moments of success that have marked their journeys.

This session invites attendees into the intimate process of legacy-making, offering not only practical insights but also a deeper understanding of the emotional and ethical dimensions of this work. By hearing from those who are at the forefront of navigating these issues, participants will leave with a richer and deeper appreciation of the diverse pathways through which legacies are preserved, and the ways we can collectively build stronger, more supportive systems for this vital work into the future.

SPEAKER BIOS

Kwame Brathwaite

Kwame Samori Brathwaite is the Director of the Kwame Brathwaite Archive, overseeing preservation and collaborative projects aligned with the themes of activism, fashion, politics, and music found in his father’s work. He has written for National Geographic, and has lectured at Harvard Art Museums, The Courtauld Institute, Google, and Christie’s. Kwame co-curated Celebrity and the Everyday and curated the touring exhibition Black is Beautiful: The Photography of Kwame Brathwaite (2019–2023), among others. He also serves as Managing Director at Tavo Partners. A graduate of Amherst College and USC’s Marshall School of Business, Kwame is a trustee of Aperture Foundation and Polytechnic School. Originally from New York City, he lives in Pasadena, CA.

Teresita Fernández

Teresita Fernández (b.1968) is a NYC based artist whose work is characterized by an expansive rethinking of what constitutes landscape—from the subterranean to the cosmic, from national borders to the more elusive landscapes we carry within. Her sculptural work, public art, films, and installations poetically challenge ideas about land and landscape by exposing the history of colonization and the inherent bias embedded in how we imagine and define place. Fernández is a MacArthur Foundation Fellow and the recipient of numerous awards, including a Guggenheim Fellowship, Creative Capital Award, Meridian Cultural Diplomacy Award, Louis Comfort Tiffany Biennial Award, American Academy of Rome Fellowship, and National Endowment for the Arts Individual Artist’s Grant. Her works have been shown both nationally and internationally at The Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art; The Smithsonian Museum of American Art, Washington, DC; The Menil Collection, Houston, TX; Philadelphia Museum of Art; and Castello di Rivoli, Turin, Italy, among others. In 2011, she was appointed by President Barack Obama to the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts and is the first Latina to serve on the 100-year-old federal panel. In 2016, she conceived of and directed the U.S. Latinx Arts Futures Symposium with the Ford Foundation.

Theaster Gates

Theaster Gates is an artist whose practice finds roots in conceptual formalism, sculpture, space theory, land art, and performance. Trained in urban planning and within the tradition of Japanese ceramics, Gates's artistic philosophy is guided by the concepts of Shintoism, Buddhism, and Animism—most notably honoring the "spirit within things." Foundational to Gates' practice is his custodianship and critical redeployment of culturally significant Black objects, archives, and spaces. Through the expansiveness of his approach as a thinker, maker, and builder, Gates extends the life of disappearing and bygone histories, places, traditions, and loved ones. Gates is the recipient of numerous awards and honorary degrees including the Guggenheim Fellowship (2025); Isamu Noguchi Award (2023); National Buildings Museum Vincent Scully Prize (2023); Frederick Kiesler Prize for Architecture and the Arts (2022); an Honorary Fellowship from the Royal Institute of British Architects (2021); the World Economic Forum Crystal Award (2020); J.C. Nichols Prize for Visionaries in Urban Development (2018); Nasher Sculpture Prize (2018); Sprengel Museum Kurt Schwitters Prize (2017); and Artes Mundi 6 Prize (2015).

Francis Greenburger

Francis Greenburger is an American real estate developer, literary agent, author, philanthropist, activist, and founder of Time Equities Inc., Art Omi, Inc., and the Greenburger Center for Social & Criminal Justice. In 1992, he founded Art Omi, a sculpture and architecture park and arts center that also provides residencies for visual artists, writers, dancers, musicians, and architects from all over the world. He serves on the board of several not-for-profit organizations and is an active donor to over 300 charitable organizations.

Lisa Le Feuvre

Lisa Le Feuvre is a curator, writer, and editor. In 2018 she became the inaugural Executive Director of Holt/Smithson Foundation, the artist foundation dedicated to the legacies of artists Nancy Holt (1938-2014) and Robert Smithson (1938-1973), building the foundation from the ground up. From its home base in New Mexico, the Foundation collaborates with artists, writers, thinkers, and institutions to realize exhibitions, publish books, initiate artist commissions, program educational events, encourage research, develop collections across the world, and create the Atlas of Artworks for Holt and Smithson, a catalogue raisonné of sorts. Le Feuvre has curated more than seventy exhibitions as an institutional and independent curator, edited over thirty books and journals, spoken at 150 museums and universities, and has published more than 125 essays and interviews with artists. Her 2024/25 curated exhibitions include Nancy Holt: Circles of Light at the Gropius Bau, Berlin (curated with Clara Meister), Robert Smithson / Teresita Fernández at SITE SANTA FE (curated with Fernández), and Nancy Holt: Power Systems and Maria Hupfield: The Endless Return of Fabulous Panther (Biimskojiwan), both at the Wexner Center for the Arts, Ohio. Previously based in the UK, Le Feuvre led the Henry Moore Institute (2010-2017) and directed the contemporary art program at the National Maritime Museum, Greenwich (2005-2009), among other positions.