[PODCAST] Art Problems: Do You Have a Plan for Your Art After You Die?

Left Ursula Davila-Villa, Right Anna Stothart

What will happen to your art when you die?

Have you made plans?

Do you feel too nervous about the thought to even make plans?

The problem with this is that if you want your art cared for after your death, you have put plans in place within your lifetime.

That's why I decided to speak with estate planning legacy experts Ursula Davila-Villa and Anna Stothart of Davila-Villa & Stothart.

During this conversation, we talk about who we preserve culture for and why, some of the nuts and bolts around legacy planning, and what changes to the field have presented advancement and challenges.

Join me, for a conversation that balances the practical, the intellectual, and the emotional stakes of artistic legacy.

READ TRANSCRIPT HERE

Podcast Episode 64: 

Paddy: You're listening to the Art Problems Podcast, episode 64. I'm your host, Paddy Johnson. This is the podcast where we talk about how to get more shows, grants, and residencies. And on today's podcast, I'm gonna talk about a much requested topic for this show, estate planning. How can you ensure a legacy for your art? To take a deep dive, into this topic, I invited legacy planning experts, Ursula Davila Villa and Anna Stothart of Davila Villa and Stothart to talk about what the job is and what you can do even if you don't have a lot of money and even if you don't have a huge career. And those things can include building community, creating oral histories and creating an inventory for your work. We'll talk about a whole lot more, but I'll let the experts lead the way.  

Paddy: Ursula, Anna, welcome to the show.  

Anna: Thank you. Thanks.  

Paddy: Well, I want to kick this off with a couple introductions. Ursula, can you introduce yourself and give us a brief explanation of what you do and how you got into the field? And then Anna, can you do the same? and how you and Ursula met.  

Ursula: I'm inspired by the latter question, which is how we met because we met a long time ago when I was a very young assistant curator, just beginning my first job out of graduate school at the Blanton Museum in Austin, Texas. And Anna came and asked me, for a job, and she became my intern. So we were both young and very enthusiastic. I would say we may have lacked experience. We both were very encouraged by the work, and that's how we met. So going from there, I'm originally from Mexico. I'm an art historian. by training and began my career in the arts in the curatorial sphere. I don't think even though I work as a curator for many years, I felt my heart was in curatorial work for the long haul.I decided to begin a project independent of everything and it was an experiment that it was going to either fail or worked. And I would say, This was in 2017, so five years into doing it, six years. It has in general succeeded, which is to work directly with artists and families on legacy stewardship and legacy planning, along with studio management.  

Ursula: It brought me back again to working very closely with artists. And since 2021, Anna and I partnered to do this work together which has made it both much more fun. I would say that without the partnership, I don't know if I would have continued to push through because there are some moments where the problems can be challenging and you definitely need two minds to kind of break it down and find ways forward. And maybe that's a good sideways to Anna.  

Anna: So I have a very similar trajectory as Ursula, as she mentioned, we met. As I was applying for graduate schools and all around the country. And so I was an intern with her for about two years. I think it started in what, 2005, I think it was. So way back, it feels like now. I also have my background in art history. I graduated from Tufts University in Boston. So while I enjoyed making exhibitions and installing shows, I found working with artists in a bigger picture capacity, much more fun. Fulfilling in many ways and much more suited to my personality and my skill set.  

Paddy: The website that you have describes the work that you do as developing and growing the foundational pillars of an artist's legacy. Scholarly recognition. Institutional visibility and strengthen commercial markets. And in our pre interview for this podcast, I had asked you to describe what you do. And a lot of our conversation took place around how hard it was to describe that work. And I think we probably circled that for, you know, close to an hour. So I thought we could start broad and narrow the conversation down from there. So like starting with a foundational principle, how do we preserve the culture around us? And from the perspective of the families and individuals, I'd also like to start with who, because if we don't have a who, the how doesn't really matter. So so who's. Whose, whose legacy are we preserving and, and how are we doing that?  

Ursula: Change only happens when the community comes together. So I think in asking who preserves for who are we preserving? I think it's, it's a dual question and taking that back to thinking who does it for whom I think is we as a, as a community should do it. And for future societies to experience and live through, which is the luxury that we now have as a society to re experience the art of ancient times and so on. That is just very broadly speaking. How the how to do it, I think there are many, many ways, and I I feel like we're at a moment where creativity around preservation shifting with the changes that we're seeing in technology will allow for different pathways and different solutions to questions around preservation of culture. But from my perspective, I think that it was good to remember that , we're not doing this just for the vanity of an artist or for the preservation of wealth in some cases. Or even for, very specific communities that are supporting mainstream institutions that have been cultivating high philanthropies that enable culture to exist in certain cities.  

Ursula: I think that there, there is an array of stakeholders and. Part of what I think Ana and I have been trying to, to do is sharing the knowledge that we ourselves are getting, reaching, accessing, making that know how accessible and available to others without monetizing knowledge. And I think that's really important. That, paired with awareness, education, and commitment to cultural preservation one step at a time, one person at a time, may help us see beyond the differences, to think in a hundred years from now, the history of this moment will be told by these artifacts, these objects, these stories, and these narratives.I think that the contemporary artists that we have the honor to work with, in a way, are giving us richness that will benefit others in generations to come. It's just the question is how, how to achieve that and how to do it in an equitable manner. So it's not just a certain few that will be able to, to preserve culture for, for a certain select few, but rather to, to make it more expansive.  

Anna: Yeah, I think just to sort of add to that briefly, I think, in both of our roles as curators and working at galleries, we saw how both, institutions, so to speak, aid in preserving the culture and sort of legacy of an artist in different ways. And so I think that as Ursula says, it's right. It is the community. It's all sort of elements. People in academia, people in institutions, people in art galleries, collectors, all of those things that kind of come together to preserve the, an artist's legacy by supporting them and by writing essays and by, making exhibitions with the work. I think there's all sorts of ways that that can happen.  

Paddy: Sometimes artists who don't have visibilities or market. built around their work will start organizing their work with the understanding that they may not have visibility within their lifetime. And I'm just wondering if you could name some examples of artists who you've worked with who have done some of that and what that looks like.  

Ursula: I mean, I, I'm a firm believer that artists can impact their local communities and maybe it's part of, you know, I did graduate school in New York, but my first full time job was in Austin, Texas and I grew up in Mexico City. So I went from very big cities. I moved from Los Angeles to a much smaller place back in 2005 when I moved to Austin. Well, it was a vibrant city. It was a small city. And I was working with a Latin American collection that brought together countries from all over the continent and thinking locally and for the audience that was there, both students and local members or members of the Austin community was part of the job I remember some of UT students that had never been to museums because UT has an admissions policy that brings in the 10 best students from different high schools around the state. So some of them really came from very, very small towns in Texas, had never been to a museum, and they had to come to the museum as part of curricula. And it was incredible to see how, for some, not everyone, but some, it would be a life changing experience to enter a gallery and see a work of art. So I would say that all art has that power, some more than others, but there is a real sense that when you connect with local communities, you can have an impact that is long lasting.  

Ursula: So I don't think legacy means international recognition always. It might be for some, but it's not for everyone. I don't think that that's where it leaves, nor does it mean market success in every all cases, there is a need for some degree of financial capacity to do certain things as much as we advocate for preservation and stewardship of legacies. We also very much encourage stewards not to do work for entirely for free. A lot of the stewardship work is, being done by women. So it goes back to questions around care and invisibility of labor and the fact that women are, are doing the majority of it. So we are trying to, also shed light to the, to the question of stewardship needs to come with understanding of what the work is and how it can be compensated. But I would say that for artists that we've worked with that did not occupy in a particular space within the large. scope of contemporary art, it was finding their community. And there was one estate we worked with and the artist had passed away and he was a ceramicist. We always go by the works of the work felt to us very powerful, very interesting.  

Ursula: And we went directly to the different communities of ceramicists across the country. That particular project had the goal of placing works of his. in collections around the country as donations. And the response we got was immense because, while he was not a well known artist in the contemporary field, he was very well known and very respected amongst ceramicists. So there was a real enthusiasm when we began conversations. And we are not specialists on ceramics, so we had to do a lot of research to identify And we, brought in somebody that had, was an artist, a ceramicist, that helped us put together that research. So I would say that that is, is critical.And the other for people that are not in New York City, New York tends to think of itself as a bit like the center of the world. And while I live there, I am not from there, and having lived in other places, I feel like, There is a constant or that tendency to look towards the bigger cities as the places and I feel like it's the opposite part of the richness that the U.S. has is the locality. How specific each local community can be and how little gestures can become important. So, for example, having our display in the local hospital may be meaningful to the people that. Are visiting friends or family at the hospital or even the patients themselves. And that doesn't mean that your work will be in a museum, but it does mean that it has an impact to the people that are in your community. And I think that that at times may even be more important than if there are large retrospectives in particular places. I feel like art has a power that very few things have, but it's finding ways to create this level of partnership and community building that that can yield it. Otherwise, It's, it's hard to, to envision it. I really, really believe that, that it's there.  

Anna: But it's finding the right sort of path in, because, while it seems that there's all these artists who are largely unknown and suddenly later in their career or once in a state comes. It's like there gets, there's a lot of press around, suddenly there's this huge market boom around and all the collectors are buying for work and they become hugely successful. You know, when you look at the number of artists that are out there who have been out there that's a very small fraction of people making work, but that doesn't make their work less significant. I think that there are other sort of necessary paths for many people. I mean, even artists who maybe did have their heyday. There's an artist that we're working with who had a number of shows in the between the seventies and the nineties. And then, in the early nineties decided to keep her sculpture practice more private and all the while was making really incredible sculpture in her studio and doing more sort of collaborative social political sort of work more publicly. And now later in life and Has decided like, what am I going to do with all of this stuff? And so we're working with her to kind of make those decisions and determine how best to find homes for those things, or even just bring that area of her practice, more visibility because it didn't really have any between the nineties and today, so it's, everyone kind of has their own, the work kind of needs something a little bit different depending on their background.  

Paddy: Yeah. And like, how important is it for an artist to be organized with their stuff? Like have their inventory cataloged or whatever in terms of preserving legacy?  

Ursula: If there is a plan for posthumous legacy stewardship, it's critical. Like if doing it in your lifetime, if you can't, If not, somebody else will have to do it. But the difference if you do it in your lifetime is that there are questions that only artists can answer. So if you don't do it in your lifetime, whomever might do it in future may have to make educated guesses. So there's great benefit to artists. You know, devoting some time, some of them hate it, some of it, it can be very boring, that's one of the things people tend to do. It's like we are not archivists, we can work with archivists or registrars to catalogue work, but we ourselves don't do that work, but it is critical. I would also say that, you know, if you're thinking about curricula, I, strongly feel like captions for art could be a great potential for education that some of it in the last few years, like understanding the difference between media, only artists that have worked with the media nowadays really know it, but if you have not experienced it, live it or seen it, touch it A lot of people don't know what a serigraph might be, how different it might be than a woodcut, even though they're entirely different. So I think there is great potential to doing the work, and then, For some, every caption, every media has a story to tell. Some artists , have a lot to say about materials they chose. And while that might not enter the inventory, they're always, in my experience, every time I've done the work, it's almost like you need to do an oral history project alongside cataloging work because there is always a story to be told. When the artist is going through their archive, assessing titles, dates and registration. So there is the practical side of it that is great. And then there's this other part that in doing that, there are stories that will be revealing and likely very important and useful in the future.  

Paddy: So the, the captions themselves, you're saying tell a story.  

Ursula: Yeah. I'm firm. I feel like not only the title and date, like, those two are straightforward. Yeah. I think, yeah, what are the materials? that, that make a work. Some artists choose to be very coy , not to disclose everything that's in the work. Some choose to be very explicit and list absolutely everything. Some are repetitive, some are inconsistent. So I think that there are a lot of, it's like metadata for the work is the caption. Yeah.  

Anna: And even sometimes you'll see when you're trying, when you're tracing the sort of history of an object, either as a curator or let's say you're working at a gallery and have a new relationship with a sort of later career artist, it's, you realize that sometimes there were subtle shifts either in the way the date appears or the way the title appears and even just asking questions can provide a whole wealth of information. And so a lot of the work we do is Asking questions around certain details that often originate in the caption that then provide us with a significant amount of information about decisions that were made when the work was produced or shortly thereafter, or how those decisions came to be made. And a lot of times it's. You know, another party that's weighing in on, Oh, you should do it like this or, Oh, you should do it like that. But then our primary objective is always to sort of get to the heart of what the artist's intent was and what their wishes were. And and how do we record that in.  

Paddy: I am somebody who actually really likes captions and I did not know more than they were from that, from your perspective. So that is very, that is something that I have learned this podcast. And you mentioned briefly that technology Or technology developments have really aided with this. Like what are some examples of that? How is technology helping us? I'm just asking because I think within the group of artists that I work with, who are living artists usually mid career, there's a lot of anxiety over technology right now due to AI scraping images and training on them things like that. Not all technology advances are bad. And so I think it'd be interesting to just hear like how the field has advanced.  

Ursula: I mean, I would say I am also anxious about AI. There's so many open questions. And I do think that there's so little written into the law. I mean, the already technology is not very regulated, but AI is. It's definitely infringing in some aspects of copyright law, and it's leaving a lot of open questions. So I think the anxiety that the artistic community is feeling is, is warranted. And I do think that the big companies owe creators, artists, a more clear pathway for how intellectual property will be guarded as AI advances. That is a critical shift that We yet we'll see what what it will bring, I think, in terms of how technology has helped. There's some practical things, for example, a oral history, which I think is one of the most effective tools that can help preserve and document that. is available to many that you can train in doing good interviews and think through how to, there's always ethical issues around oral histories, but there are many ways to address them without it becoming overwhelming or difficult. The ability to have a AI generated transcriptions of oral history. Well, not ideal to just leave a transcript as a I product. It always, I think, requires one to review the transcript by really listening to the oral history, but access to technology that both means you can quickly record, really listen, transcribe, And save a document means that what in the past would have taken a lot of labor and time and even maybe would have made it expensive to find the right microphone to record somebody's voice.  

Ursula: Now you can do it with a telephone on hand. And if on the luxury of things, I did Mike and have it recorded, but in many cases you can almost just do it over your phone. And that becomes an important record and document going forward. That, I think, is where technology has really shifted things and made tools available at either for free or prices that are not indiscriminate. I think digital catalog resonance is another field that has really shifted the ability for artists that need a catalog resonance. Not every artist should do that one. Or needs one. But for some that need it, in the past, it was always a printed book that was highly, highly difficult to achieve because the cost was insurmountable. And it's not that the costs, all of them have gone away, but the ability to create a digital catalog resume that can change and shift over time, has made that a possibility for many more artists that in, I would say 10 years ago, or maybe 20 years ago, it would have been very difficult. And it was really just a select few that were able to do the research and pay for printing the book, a possibility. So there are many aspects that are helping, I think, you know, colleagues of ours from small data that focuses on technology as a way of, preservation are also actively researching ways in which we could collectively do it and translating what that means, because it requires specialized knowledge. I feel optimistic that there are people in the field, both learning and training, and The sharing in the knowledge that they're occurring to, to make this more accessible, especially to artists of an older generation that work with a lot of moving media that is aging rapidly. But there is, I think, optimism around how much can be achieved with what we have today at hand.  

Paddy: I love that. That's a, I feel like that's Really optimistic. And I think also gives artists, I think just points them to tools that are available to them. Now, Ursula, you've said that legacy planning is as diverse as artists. And I'm currently going through the process of redesigning the curriculum around common problems, diving into learning design and that sort of thing. And I'm having a hard time. Like wrapping my head around why the process needs to be so individualized. And so I was wondering if you could talk a little bit about why legacy planning has to be so specific to the particular artist's career.  

Ursula: I mean, I would say, and Anna, feel free to jump in here. Part of it is that legacy planning is undoubtedly a legal mechanism as well. Like if you are an artist planning your legacy, you're likely drafting an estate plan, which will involve a lawyer and all the mechanisms, the legal mechanisms are rather patriarchal. and archaic. We have chosen to work with very specific artists that have all fallen outside of mainstream activity. So while we use what we have available to us from a legal perspective, so you know, we're not reinventing an estate plan, we certainly are thinking how the, how to shift things to meet the practice and not the other way around, not to make the practice too bit whatever structures we have available to us, because if we go by that, they're both patriarchal, archaic, at times bias. So I think that there are many commonalities. So, for example, having a clean inventory, having a sense of what you have, how much of it How well is preserved like it's physical condition are aspects that you can apply across the board, no matter who you are and what kind of work you create. But once you have very basic road data, I feel that part of the job of what, you know, this new field that is being defined as legacy stores means is to creatively think, what do we have in our field that can help us achieve what the artist ambitions? So part of the role and work is protecting not just the tangible property, but artistic intent, which is quite intangible. Maybe that's a good moment for Anna.  

Anna: Yeah, and I think, it's also important, even though there are many things each artist can do, it's, they don't always want to do all of the things that are there for them. So, legacy preservation for one artist may just be making sure that the major works that they've created in their lifetime end up in public institutions in some capacity, but less focused on archive or less focused on other sort of forms of scholarship. The scholarship will come. when the works are in public collections and future intellectual scholars, curators can sort of build on that. Whereas some, it's all about the archive. It's all about making sure that their entire archive is placed somewhere where students and scholars will have access to it. So I think, to Ursula's point, it's the reason it's sort of driven By the individual artists is, is not only because of the nature of their work, which also comes into play, but also what their specific desires are and making sure that we are one following what their goals are. And of course, guiding them. If you know, if someone were to say like, I just want everything, I don't care what happens. I hope every, if someone throws it away, I don't care. Obviously we will guide them to say, maybe that's not the direction to go. But, and that there are other options that are maybe less difficult in your lifetime. But I do think that certain artists whose practices are multidisciplinary, or perhaps were collaborative in some sense, or have gone in multiple different directions, I think that there has to be a bit more of a nuanced way to help them express themselves. Explore options for preserving their legacy. And that's, that's the, that's the work that we do with them is that we look at each artist situation and we help guide them or give them the options that are out there for them. And once they make a decision, then we continue to support them along the way.  

Paddy: You know one of the things that came up and has come up a couple times in this conversation is the notion of patriarchy and how that really if we were to do nothing, then I think patriarchy would, would be a win even.  

Anna: Would always win will forever win. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.  

Paddy: Yes. Thank you.  

Paddy: And I guess I'm wondering how that comes up in your work, where you run into patriarchy and what tools you have at your disposal to push against that a little.  

Anna: I mean, I think we run into it every, at every turn and every aspect of our sort of careers. Artists run into it constantly. I would say the way that we've been dealing with it is to begin to develop new models and new forms of partnership that are collaborative.  

Ursula: In the United States, I think patriarchy is very intertwined with capitalism. So if we are to And power. Capitalism and power. I would say, like, if we both think of, I mean, at first it was our mutual, you know, This is not something we we purposely discuss. I think it's just how we are when we were both curators. I think we both thought of ourselves more as facilitators. And maybe that's what made me not, you know, a great curator. I just didn't like to under the spotlight. So I think that in unmoving away from the spotlight and being behind the scenes seems counterintuitive in a world in which profiling oneself is featuring your person as part of your brand is part of what is helping many succeed. It's not that I don't think that's a model that can help go forward, but I think what we have decided in terms of core values that very much push back against patriarchy, and I would say capitalism, is that while we need to pay Art bills and make a living. So when I decided to move away from the gallery, I gave up a good paying job. That was in the commercial sphere that normally is at the top tier of how much you can make in the art world. Right at, you know, I would say at a moment that I could have potentially made more. And I made the decision for personal reasons. I had recently become a mother, but I also deeply felt like the conversations I wanted to have with artists were just not possible in a commercial space. So how we pushed in a way would be to say, well, we both gave up better paying jobs in order to, and without, making it about the money, but ultimately it is an important part of making a living and planning ahead. Another would be, that's a very personal response to what we decided to do in a very specific moment. in time for ourselves. But the other is the artists that we have chosen to work with. I do think of many of the older artists that we work with as role models for things that totally fall outside of the art and the art field and art history, but rather how they lived life, how they confronted discrimination, sidelining, gaslighting, and they kept on going. I mean, these are artists that For many decades were not recognized and while some are now important voices, they've lived a longer years they're cloaked of invisibility than under a spotlight. And I think the fragility that comes with a parent's success at an elder age is something that really humanizes them. The work itself tells a story that is less about what the market wanted at a certain point in time, and much more what they almost what they needed to create in order to exist. And I think that that pushes against the patriarchy. It doesn't conform with what is expected, but rather creates out of pure necessity, no matter the consequences. And I think looking at the artists as inspiration as like, what, what have they given us and how do we give it back?  

Ursula: It's part of what we try to do, including, you know, trying to place work with museums, knowing that museums are struggling, there is less money going towards them. them. There is much more, there are a lot of issues that have to do with institutional biases that they are confronting. So patiently working with them is another way. Nowadays, time is, seems like a luxury. And that's part of what we purposely decide to bring into our work. Giving our colleagues time because they needed a lot of stress and making quick and rapid decisions seems to be the trend and we push back against that. Yeah, it's time is an important part of the work that we do.  

Paddy: Oh, I love that because I do feel like that trend of having to make quick decisions is, I mean, I don't even know if it's a trend. I think it's a condition, right? Like it's part of the contemporary experience and pushing back against that, I think it's really important. We've talked a lot about like how difficult it is to sort of nail down exactly what you're You know, what legacy planning is, but I also thought a pretty important part of talking about it is what it, what it isn't because that also came up in our pre interview in terms of like, what kind of preconceptions there are out there. And I thought it might be also useful to talk about that. Can you tell me what kinds of things. people most commonly think you do that you don't?  

Anna: I think, well, easier to say sort of positions that we aren't. People think that we're art advisors. We are not. We are also not a gallery. We don't function like a gallery. We don't have a space. We don't. So even though we place work, sell works to museums on behalf of the artists, Compensation is very different than what it would be with a gallery partnership. We're not lawyers. And so, we don't do the sort of legal drafting and those kinds of things. And so kind of going back to what we were just talking about, this is where the partnerships come into play. And this is where I think one can create a more equitable environment that actually supports the artist. So by involving people like us. To aid in decision making in sometimes translating and sometimes advocating on their behalf with a third party, we are kind of evening the playing field a little bit, bringing our experience and our knowledge to the table on their behalf. So I think when it comes to again, I think I'm answering in a very big way because it's hard as hard as it is to say what we do. It's also difficult to say specifically what we don't do because. Sometimes we'll start with like, Oh, you know, we don't do this. But then there, a circumstance arises where an artist needs something from us. And we're like, okay, well, we look at it from this angle. We can support the artists in this way. So it's really always artists. It's always artists driven, but it's. The best way to think about the work that we do is that we are, we are advocates, we are facilitators, we are, I don't know, stewards or partners. And, and this isn't just for the artists we provide. It's, we, we want to be good partners for the galleries that are supporting the artists, for the curators that are supporting the artists, for the lawyers that are working with the artists. So we're kind of that kind of interlocutor, which is trying to make everyone's partnerships a little easier, I would say. I don't know.  

Paddy: You know, one of the things that strikes me about the decision that both of you made to go out and do this work is how courageous it was. And it's not just because, and this may be just my perspective, but it's not just because you, Gave up money to do that and like health insurance and all the rest. That is a pretty big deal. Yeah. But I think also because you decided to do something that has A lot of emotional labor in it. You know, we use words like legacy and I think they sound a little sterile compared to what I imagine the conversations that you must have with the people you work with when you are dealing with legacy, I can't speak for anybody else, but I know that I don't particularly want to think about my own death. I would imagine there's some hesitancy, but also like that you have to deal with family members and deal with like, how do you not take on the grief? of your clients.  

Ursula: Oh, it's very hard. I mean, that's part of the joy of the work. Exactly what you say. I do think the part that I love the most about the work is how artists are rendered in all their humanity. You don't get just a slice of them. You get the totality of them. And with that comes A lot of imperfection. All of us are imperfect humans and you get the best, you get the difficult, you get a times the ugly, but you know, that's, that's a condition of being a human being said that, you know, you can imagine that the joys can be as high as the parts that are difficult. And I have only experienced one passing meaning. An artist that I was working with who passed away, and I didn't expect my own grief to be as it was because we've talked so much about death. It was in how I was raised, that is very much a matter of fact. It's repeated, you know, almost daily. Like it will happen just as a matter of when. I think that that is what, the work is, and what makes it valuable. When I graduated from grad school, I, the head of my program gave me an advice. I came to his office very perplexed because I had studied museum studies. And by the end of two years, I said to him, I don't understand. I came so excited about museums and I leave a program that was very critical. It was critical theory, completely confused. Museums are very complicated, challenging places. I'm not feeling reassured by it. What knowledge I accrued in going and working for institutions that have so much baggage. He, you know, smile and laugh and said, well , that's so sweet. You're very young. And that's just life. That's a reality. And what you need to do is know where your line is. There will always be conflicting realities ahead of you is for you. You need to just assess where are the lines that you're not willing to cross in the path of moving through the motions. If you have that clarity of mind, you'll do good. Because there is no black and white, there will always be gray. And I think that that was the point in which when I left the gallery for me, there was a line there. If I was to continue working in the arts, it needed to be in a different role, in a different capacity, like one layered. I felt like the art world has become very flattened. I needed more depth to the relationships. That's me, but , it's a very personal question and I should answer as well.  

Anna: No, no, no. I mean, I think I feel the same and it is there is a lot of emotional labor and not even just around questions of death, but anxiety around where the work is going to end up, anxiety around the artist's future legacy, and anxiety around being able to support themselves for the rest of their life. And I think a lot of that comes our way. And so. To be perfectly honest, I, as Ursula said in the beginning, I certainly would not be able to do this alone. Like my partnership with Ursula, I mean, us being friends helps, you know, but it also, I really think us being able to support each other. And sometimes I, I dive a little too deep into the emotional side of things and Ursula sort of has to pull me back out and give me some perspective because while these are professional relationships, as I think many of us in this industry know, it is very personal. We come into this because we love it deeply. We care about the artists that we are working with. We care about the work. We believe that it all matters. And so, it is difficult not to sort of go in fully. Which is, I think, which also makes us very good at what we do is that we're able to kind of do that come from sort of come with empathy, come with but also our experience and intellect and creative sides, it's, we're able to kind of do this full service thing, but it is, it can be difficult. And I think what I, Ursula has been doing this longer than I have, and it is, I have not experienced the passing of an artist that I am close with, and we'll say, I'm not looking forward to the future of that, but I think the thing that I am, Really enjoying is the opportunity to spend time with them, to get to know them in a way that I wouldn't have in any other capacity. Yeah. And getting to be a part of helping them make decisions that will lead to an outcome that is their, their wish. That feels very, that feels very good. And while many of them don't necessarily want to talk about their death, all of them want to talk about what happens to their work. All of them. Like I would say, like everybody wants to know what is going to happen to the stuff, what is going to happen to all of the things that I have spent my life making. And so sometimes that's the avenue in.  

Paddy: You know, one of the things that I came up in our previous discussion, I just felt it was, it spoke to me kind of pretty powerfully was how central artists are to this world and how often they're, they've, are quite disenfranchised from the art world itself. And I wondered if you could talk about that because it seems like something that might be kind of adjacent to what you do, but it came up and I felt like that was something that was maybe not really that like it was part of a core belief in something that you felt needed rectifying.  

Anna: I mean, I would say that. None of us would be here, I mean, we wouldn't even be having this conversation if it wasn't for artists and the work that they make, you know, I'm the daughter of an artist. My father is an artist who, spent his whole life making work, but received recognition in a very sort of niche market, but not sort of widely recognized totally undervalued himself, continues to do so. So, I would say that, Seeing the amount of time and energy and effort and dedication it takes to be an artist and then working in institutions that support that work and seeing the power imbalance. It was always really shocking to me because when you think of it, say it so literally, it doesn't really make any sense because none of us would be doing this if it weren't for them and their work. And the work is going to be the thing that outlasts us all. And so giving consideration to decisions around those things that will outlast us all seems of the utmost importance.  

Ursula: I mean, and said that. I, I do think artists are very disenfranchised from the current systems institutions. It's , very tied to a power and capital and artists that conform to more capitalistic forces at times tend to do better than those that do not. That's not always the case, but it is it's a reasonable observation. I think that it goes maybe back to the original question, like why and who preserves what? Think art is It's important to societies. I grew up, of course, in Mexico, where you see art everywhere. And I was purposely decided to have murals all over the city to educate people in, in a way that was , very popular and accessible. And over time, I think it, it becomes this point of pride of what we have as Mexicans in, in our buildings and how much access we have to really great works of art. And I do think that. If we prioritize art as something important for what makes us human, what makes a society, how do we think about civility and civics? Art has the power to do that. And while there are moments that all of that core beliefs are shaken, and I feel like there's just forces against that, that are pushing for other directions. I do strongly believe that still, there are moments that People will experience something special in the face of a powerful work of art that will make them see the world in a slightly different way. And that is the way that we become a better society. So if that's the power that art can give us and the ones that are behind that are artists, why then are they not protected, empowered, and placed in society in a way that would value you? them as what the work brings to society as a whole. It's moving in that direction in all, all the humanities, you know, like musicians, you can apply it to not just visual artists, but All cultural producers where not culture cannot always be monetized.  

Ursula: Not always will be for consumption and entertainment, but the value is different and more lasting. So how do we change that as like core beliefs of society? It, again, I think community building, partnership building is part of the solution awareness and education is another one. And for that, considering how the arts in all the disciplines that we're impact public schools and access to that? It's a critical question. So, what we don't do that directly for artists that care about education, we of course try to think about ways to encourage partnerships that will be lasting in the context of a like true primary school education. I don't mean it in another way. So again, it's to think about legacy outside of the traditional spaces, museums, collections, archives, and to think of it, how does it Occupy a little bit of curricula either at university level or if it's possible in certain conditions at primary school level if that's accessible and of importance and interest to the artist. I don't know how. I don't think we have a magic wand to change it, but just naming it saying this is this is wrong. This is not how we should concede their artists in our society. I think it's part of what We decided to do, to leave our jobs, to say, we're going to do it differently and directly with them consider other avenues. We don't know all of them and we are going to be humble in this process, but we're going to try to find. All their pathways to communicate.  

Paddy: This was a couple of years ago, but I was talking to people about how to make the membership better, but I wanted to also find out like what kinds of things they were, they were excited about, what kinds of things they were afraid of, and I remember very vividly, somebody telling me that. The thing he was really afraid of was that he was doing this all for nothing and that like, his children would have to throw out his art. I didn't like that.  

Anna: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it happened, unfortunately, that does happen. And that's why it's good for people to make it very clear what their wishes are. And Think about ways, because I think today gifting everything is not an option as much as it maybe once was years ago. And so I think making decisions in an artist's lifetime as to how, To keep that from, from happening, giving work to friends, giving work, like Ursula said, local schools, things like that, to make sure that there is some sort of life beyond, so that it doesn't end up thrown away.  

Paddy: Just to clarify that, you're saying that, like, it used to be more able to gift your work to a museum, and now museums It's more difficult.  

Anna: About why that is storage? Resources , a number of museums for from inception to the sort of early days, I believe took a lot of gifts sort of, , from their patrons important benefactor would pass away and they would take on the collection. And I think a number of them have amassed such huge collections that they are now having to sort of assess everything and think like, can we care for not only the work we have, but how much more work can we take on? And so I think that they are being much more discerning when it comes to Taking on gifts, they almost look at it more with a sort of microscope than they would if it was something that they were purchasing in many ways because it, you know, it's not just taking on something you have to care for it forever. It's their responsibility. And so that comes with conservation, that comes with storage, that comes with a number of things. So it is becoming more and more difficult. We're finding to have gifting conversations.  

Ursula: I don't want to repeat. I think that museums are, have shifted and changed and that has just created a more complicated sphere in which collecting has changed over time, not to mention the corrections around biases embedded in a lot of permanent collections across the country where there was representation that was not reflecting the society the museums are living with. So I think that that is part of it. I would say, the anxiety over the pandemic. I'm doing all of these for nothing. It's not uncommon and you would be surprised how many artists say that even those that you would argue, there's already so many manifestations that is not for nothing. I think that, I think being an artist is one of the hardest jobs. It's almost like you can't choose it. Like they're really, the artists that I've known, and this is well known and not well known, it's almost like an existential existence. They have to do the work in order to. exist and breathe is not necessarily almost like a profession. I think it's a very different, very personal journey. And I think that if that's what it means, of course it feels very existential to think, does it end with your own life ending? You know, for most of us, morals and mortals and humans, whatever legacy we leave behind, maybe children, maybe certain things of care, but It doesn't carry these bigger questions of who does what and how and with what money.  

Ursula: It's much more circumspect. I think artists feel almost like this moral obligation, but for those that have families, there is that possibility of having, think of that, a lot of families don't want to do the work or they begin to do the work only to find that it's very difficult, laborious, long term, can be very isolating. I think there's a real push and move nowadays for families. doing legacy stewardship work to connect amongst them to feel companionship and support. And I find it's a very generous field where people support and speak to each other. But it all begins with artists either deciding to bring on their families and asking if they want to be part of it or not. And for those that do not have families, it goes back to community. There's no state sponsorship for cultural preservation in the United States. So it's not like local museums can have the budget and the capacity to simply care for the culture of its local artists. There are no grants to do a lot of this work either. Whereas in Europe, there's a lot of funding that can provide that level of support in the U. S. is, is much more difficult. While at the same time has the benefits of you know, if there are any of capitalism where there, there are ways of monetizing some of the work, like licensing of images and work that, that is And I think that's something that's seldom done in European contexts. I would say Latin America, and that's just , I care about the context and the and the place I come from. It's much more precarious. Nevertheless, I would say their models in Latin America of cultural preservation that are very grassroots oriented. So I feel again, it's part of the existential drive is talking to others about it.  

Ursula: I think for artists is very difficult to talk about this issue with other artists because it reveals a degree of vulnerability and nobody. It's comfortable doing that. So part of, I think what we have encouraged is to have those conversations with people that are a willing ear. There are many more people in the field that are doing the kind of work we are doing. And I would say, you know, there's more work than right now people working it. So there is great potential for this field to continue to grow because a lot of the times the anxiety can just ease by talking through the options that exist. And once that renders itself more clearly, I think artists are able to visualize what can happen for them in the way that they would want or like, or what cannot. And even knowing what cannot happen, I think, brings reassurance. I think anxiety just continues to be the driving force if conversations are not happening. But it's very normal, I think, to feel that level of anxiety and to question whether everything's for nothing. I think that's a very valid question. There are answers to it, but it's, it's not a bad question to ask. I think. Yeah.  

Paddy: Yeah. So I want to thank Both of you for coming on the show because I feel like you've just offered a level of, I don't know, intellectual rigor that is really needed. I wondered, how can people find out more about what you do? Outside of the podcast obviously.  

Anna: Our website. It's dvs.art and it has our bios. It has sort of exhibitions we've done. It has, our areas of practice and it also has a page of resources. So, ursula in the early years, I think read every book, went to every seminar, did all of the things to sort of become an expert in legacy all things legacy stewardship. And so there's a whole list of resources that people can access that are kind of ways to begin thinking about this. So it's accessible. We recommend going and checking it out. Yeah. And then, we both. have Instagrams, but we don't, I guess we don't, we aren't very so good at Instagram by posting things about our work. As people can imagine, it's, I think we, we often, the work that we do necessarily needs to be kind of discreet. So we're not always putting it everywhere, but that's also kind of a way to know what we're up to. I don't know, Ursula, am I missing anything?  

Ursula: No, I would say the, the, the website and yes, We have Instagram presences, but we're not I wouldn't point them as a reference of what we do.  

Paddy: Yeah. You know, every time I see a dentist, for example, with an Instagram, I'm like, I don't trust this dentist because they like, and I sort of feel the same with legacy planning, like. The Instagram is not where you need to be spending your time.  

Anna: We're, it's not where we're doing a lot of business. I mean, it shows kind of our travels and what we're looking at and sort of, if we're working on a project with an artist that becomes public, but you'll see a lot of my cat, for example, that's, that's really what, what I get featured gets featured on mine. The website is the best. Yeah.  

Paddy: Okay. So we'll have that in the show notes, Anna and Ursula. Thank you so much for coming on the show. And I think that is all.  

Anna: Great. Thank you for having us so much.  

Paddy