Artists’ estates
The question of how to deal with artists’ estates has become a pressing issue. This topic is examined from different angles at numerous specialist conferences and symposia. There are numerous foundations and associations that take care of estates. The “Bundesverband Künstlernachlässe” was founded in 2017 to coordinate the interests of the various artists’ estates initiatives.
The BBK Saxony-Anhalt has also been working intensively on this problem for several years. To this end, our members founded a working group on artists’ estates in 2015. We focus on two aspects in particular. On the one hand, we document catalogs raisonnés and estates digitally in our“Saxony-Anhalt Fine Arts Database“, and on the other, we are committed to the establishment of a “Saxony-Anhalt Center for Artists’ Estates”. In its coalition agreement, the state government assures that it will support the BBK in establishing an archive of estates.
In the pilot phase of the project from 2018 to 2021, selected directories were entered into the works database, covering a range of artistic genres, generations and regional distribution within Saxony-Anhalt. The pilot phase was financed by the Investitionsbank Sachsen-Anhalt as part of the “Digital Heritage” program. The first three directories were compiled by project […]