Episode 069 Ursula Davila-Villa
Show Notes
In our latest episode we visit with artist legacy specialist Ursula Davila-Villa. In her crucial work, Ursula helps artists and their families put appropriate plans in place to ensure that their work and archives will exist in a way consistent with the artist’s wishes after they are gone. This unique work draws upon conservation, archives, estate planning, curation, and more. Despite how critical this work is, it isn’t really something you can go to school for. Tune in to hear the fascinating path that led Ursula to become a leader in this field, working countless artists including Cecilia Vicuña, Lorraine O'Grady, Carolee Schneemann, and many more.
Links from the conversation with Ursula
> https://blantonmuseum.org
> https://www.fundacionjumex.org
> https://www.alexandergray.com
> Davila-Villa & Stothart: https://dvs.art
> Aspen Institute Artist Endowed Foundations Initiative: https://www.aspeninstitute.org/programs/program-on-philanthropy-and-social-innovation-psi-2/artist-endowed-foundations-initiative
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Transcript
[00:00:00] Cass: From Small Data Industries, this is Art and Obsolescence. I'm your host Cass Fino-Radin and on this show, I chat with people that are shaping the past, present and future of art and technology. Today we're chatting with somebody who plays a huge role in stewarding the legacies of artists.
[00:00:17] Ursula: Hi I am Ursula Davila-Villa and I'm an artist Legacy specialist.
[00:00:21] Cass: I met Ursula many years ago and have always been so fascinated by her work of helping artists face. Tough questions of mortality and put appropriate plans in place for after they're gone. It's crucial work and is of course, sort of inextricably intertwined with conservation and archives, and many of the other roles we've explored on this show. Despite how critical the work Ursula does though, it's not really something that you can go to school for. And I think that's something that you tend to find often within the art world and if you have been listening to the show since day one, that will likely resonate with the varied and completely unpredictable paths that led all of our guests to their unique positions. Ursula is certainly no exception to this as we'll hear her path wound its way through studying architecture, fetching coffee in galleries, becoming a museum curator, switching back to the gallery world and then finally going out on her own into this unique field of working with artists and their families on ensuring that appropriate steps are taken to ensure that their work and archives will exist in a way consistent with the artist's wishes after they are gone. Now we usually begin by hearing our guests origin story, but today to better understand this very unique role that Ursula occupies. we'll first dive in with the question of what exactly does an artist's legacy specialist do in Ursula's own words.
[00:01:43] Ursula: When I started, I did not know that, there was such a thing as a legacy specialist. The only thing I knew was that I was having conversations with artists in a gallery context that did not feel like the kind of conversation one should have in a relationship that is based on financial transactions.
And It felt like artists either were able to talk about things like planning what to do with, like whether prints can be printed after they pass away or not, either with a lawyer or with a gallery. And something felt wrong there. It felt like there should be a space in which artists can talk about what they want, that is an in-between the market, the legal field, there are a lot of great lawyers that do trust and estates, but they're not inexpensive. So even for artists to have the financial capacity to go pay on an hourly basis, it's not every artist. It was more out of understanding that something was missing and I couldn't name it, I couldn't describe it yet. I also knew I didn't know enough about, law questions around an inheritance law, both in, US context and US and UK that share the same legal system versus, places like Mexico or Europe that share, a totally different way of understanding inheritance.
I took the first year off, after leaving the gallery to study, take every workshop that I could. Read a lot of literature that's out there that speaks about the technical aspects of legal, discussions around, estates and like even artists states, some would debate is wrong because it is a legal term. And then after that, defined, for myself, that what I wanted was to create, a safe space for artists to discuss, their own legacies that was gonna be confidential, that I was not gonna partake in the market because that creates a complication for artists, and that when they know the other person's not financially benefiting from decision making that has to do with their art, they're able to speak more freely. Rather than defining what is it that I will do, I mostly say like, what is it that I will not be doing? I was not gonna give advice if I was not confident. I knew the, the answer, especially in the context of taxes and legal questions. However, I did try to educate myself as much as I could because sometimes I get, questions from artists should I do a trust or not? What is a foundation and what should I have for a foundation? And these are questions that can't be answered without a lot of legal complications that an artist should be able to know the answers before going to the lawyer and spending an hour, explained what a foundation will do. And then understanding that that's not the right thing for them. Nowadays is different. Part of what has changed, is at some point so many organizations in the arts field wanted to partake on, on artist estate, you know, Sotheby's had a, bit of fun with it and then moved away. Private advisory firms, galleries have been, very keen on doing this. And I think it's hard work and there's no quid pro quo. You, don't do the work because of work will suddenly be marketable and there will be a lot of money. And I think that that was to a degree, maybe the perception that led to some of these decisions. How I define the work now and having done it, for several years and with different artists of different generations and different ages, it is still a space mostly to have conversations to put to them their alternatives. If they wanna begin to think about legacy now, what are the realities of what needs to be in place, to also help them, in some cases have conversations around their own mortality that they may not feel comfortable yet talking to their family. Or in the case of families cause I've worked with families as well, when they're processing grief and they need to make very practical decisions and it's very hard to put the grief aside to help them bring a little bit of clear mindedness to what is it that could be convenient today versus what is beneficial for the legacy in the long run, which at times is, a different, reality. I never think that I have a view that is like the one that works for everybody. I try to come to the artists and the families that I work with, understand their point of view, understand how they're seeing things, and then take a step back and try to either bring sharp focus on things that they should be thinking about. Or clean the clutter to help them visualize what's really important versus other things that may feel emotionally important, but may have, less ramifications into the future. Almost like an assessment. And then there are the practical matters of how do you go about doing it and unfolding the day by day step 1, 2, 3, of what you can do in your lifetime. What happens after you pass away? What are the pitfalls? Very importantly, in the context of families when to step away. When is caring for a legacy, too much for a son, a daughter, a widow, and it's time to think about themselves. And I would say that I've learned more, about this from the care industry and questions around self-care than from the art field. In the art world it's almost like the legacy comes first and everything is secondary. I personally don't think that's the right way to go. It's, important to care for the carer always should be taken into account and in balance with whatever legacy goals exist. And they're complicated relationships always, and that cannot be dismissed. We need to think about it as a human field and not just our historical point of view or a market perspective. So I try to bring that level of humanity to the conversations I have.
[00:07:24] Cass: So now that we have that context, let's go back in time and find out just how Ursula arrived at this unique role.
[00:07:32] Ursula: It began in Mexico. I'm originally from Mexico, studied there, all my schooling years and childhood, was in Mexico. But I think it, really began with a, comment. I had from a professor of mine, I studied architecture and towards the end of five grueling years of studying architecture, he said, you're very good at many things, but you're not a good architect. but it was, one of the best, comments. It's not quite an advice, but I think him saying that really helped me. Know that, and I knew it. My future was not in architecture and upon graduation, I need to find my field or my calling somewhere else. And a good friend of mine who was also studying with me but also decided not to pursue it, who was a painter, is a painter, still said, why don't you apply to work at a museum or a gallery? I think you like history a lot and, you may be surprised, but maybe art history is what you should have studied. And I don't regret having studied architecture. It was a a really important way of training the way I think I. The way I understand, you know, what surrounds us, what codies society, but it was definitely not the field that I envision myself.
So it began with that, push by my friend with applying to jobs in Mexico to both galleries and museums. And my very first job was as a gallery assistant at O M R Gallery in Mexico City. this is at a particularly interesting moment for Mexico and the arts in Mexico City. Klaus Biesenbach is the time he's visiting Mexico. All these shows about Mexican art are happening internationally, and Mexico as a scene is beginning to be understood, through a different lens. All of the nineties is this moment of great creative activity in Mexico, in the arts, and a lot of alternative spaces have opened. A lot of them are artist led organizations. It felt very open, very fluid. It was a great moment to enter. I was very young and inexperienced, in hindsight, I literally was witnessing an important historical moment for the arts. My generation of artists, that role that Jumex had at the time of supporting both artists and historians to study abroad. I was one of their grantees and. The collaborative nature that were, the nineties, it shaped and changed, but I think I still was able witness it and to live it through. Most of my schooling was in Mexico, in Carretero it's a small, beautiful colonial town about two hours away from Mexico City. And then I studied abroad in, the Netherlands and in Canada. I lived in Quebec for a year. The university I studied at had great study abroad programs I signed up for everything I could that was abroad and my graduate studies were at NYU at the Museum Studies Department at a time where I think we had great faculty that brought a lot of critical thinking and questioning of museums as institutions.
So before going to graduate school, I would classify my gallery assistant job as like many others where you, you know, do coffee, clean the trash bin. But just because of the size of the gallery I was working at in Mexico was small, I was also able to have a lot of relationship with the artist. So at the time there was no such thing as artist liaison. In this case, the owners and then two staff members and the person that framed. You got to do a lot of it. It was a lot of work, but it also gave me the possibility of establishing relationships that to this day I have a nurture with artists that have aged alongside with me. And to see their work also, unfold from that time where I was young and they were young, and then, side by side and grow and take different paths, but have that long-term relationship and then, after graduate school where a lot of the studies I did really focused on museums. So, at the time, I dunno if it's the same now, but you would enter museum studies really thinking that you wanted to work in museums for the rest of your life and you would end really questioning museums and structurally what was wrong with the spaces that house culture. So I would say like the beginning of, that time, post-graduate school, even though my first job was as an assistant curator at the Blanton Museum of Art at the University of Texas, I think I got hired because I didn't wanna be a curator. And I remember my, interview, he didn't want to hire somebody that was eager to begin curating because he didn't have the calendar slots. They needed somebody that was happy to come do the work. But for shows that were already planned, given that I had joined the museum when the Blanton had just opened a new building, and I was very happy to hear that there was no pressure for me to start kind of thinking through what exhibitions needed to happen. And it gave me time to learn from amazing people working at the Blanton at the time, then begin to curate shows from a different perspective. It was, of a very specific museum because it's a university. It was also the one big museum in town. So it had to play a dual role of speaking to its university community and to the local community in Austin, Texas. Being able to be hired to not. Curate immediately gave me time to learn. And I don't think that, that happens anymore where you're just, able to begin to do a job and be given the opportunity to learn before you begin to do.
[00:13:11] Cass: Going back to you, you know, you Were talking about, your years in the gallery world the role of the artist liaison at, the gallery didn't exactly exist, but it was something that you were fulfilling. Who are some of these artists that you in these early years began developing relationships with?
[00:13:27] Ursula: From Mexico. I know one of the artists that I still, I studio visited last time I was in Mexico is Pablo Vargas-Lugo, who actually does phenomenal time-based media art even from that time and. I later invited him to do a show at, Blanton. And it was a very ambitious show he met me as a gallery assistant and you never know how artists are gonna perceive like the person bringing coffee. And I really love with that, with him, there was a possibility for me to express curiosity and to continue to build that relationship. And then he welcomed me to the studio after, I've moved on and had this new position. When you have your first shows, you are always trying to feel like people will trust you because there's still nothing behind you to say to them that they can trust you. You have a career that is beginning, you don't have a list of shows that they can look back. It required, I think, a lot of listening that I would say that now that I do what we call legacy specialist, I think learning how to hear artists having soft ears has been a really important aspect of doing this kind of work. That later was very, very important. When I left the Blanton and I joined Alexander Gray Associates, and at the time a lot of the artists that the gallery had at in the roster were late career. You really had to be humble and listen to what they were saying because of, their age and their wealth of knowledge was very important that they felt listened and that you would take that information into account at all times. I was in Texas for seven and a half years it was tumultuous time. I had five different museum directors, during seven years. So the museum changed a lot during that time. And I was a curator of Latin American art, so we had a very specific niche to cultivate and work with. And that museum in particular had a long standing relationship with a lot of Latin American communities. So I was able to travel a lot and build, relationships beyond Mexico, Argentina, and Brazil, Chile. At the seven and a half year mark, I, quit and joined the gallery, Alexander Gray Associates that is in New York. The idea of going back to New York was great for how much it fed me culturally, those years that I was there. it was different going back to a full-time job and to, a city that had, changed dramatically. It was still an immigrant city, but it was very clear that people in the arts and graduate programs, if they did not have financial support from parents or great scholarships, it really narrowed the possibility of who could be in New York versus, I think when I was there, it was still a bit more diverse from an economic point of view of who was able to live and experience the city.
[00:16:15] Cass: You mentioned at Alexander Gray that you were beginning to work with, a different generation of artists, older artists. And I know that this was your last position that you had in the gallery world before you pivoted into this work of focusing specifically on artists legacies and estates. Did that experience at that gallery working with these older artists, have an influence in that? Was that kind of, what started you down that path?
[00:16:43] Ursula: Yes, I would say absolutely. I joined the gallery, the move to New York was personal, but the choice of job was very specific. Alex, was working with artists some of them I already knew that Blanton's Collection had, um, several of the artists in his roster and I had done an exhibition of Luis Camnitzer at the Blanton Museum. Part of the reason why I think museum work has become difficult is because you don't really get to work with living artists that often, and every time you do, it's really difficult. Like institutions love, dead artists living artists always pose challenges that make it very difficult to constantly negotiate and advocate on behalf of artists. I returned to a gallery setting and the idea of being able to work in close proximity with artists such as Luis Camnitzer, who I knew and had worked with was incredible, was of great interest to me. And then among Luis was Joan Semmel, Jack Whitten, Melvin Edwards, Lorraine O'Grady, Regina Silveira from Brazil, who I knew from the Blanton. All of them, similar generation, similar background in terms of when Alex began the gallery, he really wanted to bring to the market sphere artists that had not, seen the market recognition that he thought they deserved. And in almost all cases, this has happened for them in the last decade. But all of them shared this unique quality that irregardless of what the market responded, at any point in time, they all passionately pursue art making for decades. At the time we were a very small team and were questions around, cataloging inventory. And this is decades of work for each artist. If you don't have records or they don't have records, how do you go about making sure you're dating things correctly so that if the artist says it's from like 1976, it's not just him or her saying it, but rather you have some evidence as to why the work is dated in that particular way. There was a shift in how much museums were relying on galleries. I think it correlated with a time where a lot of the entry level curatorial positions that normally do the base research for upcoming exhibitions were beginning to dwindle. Therefore, curators that have an enormous amount of work and deadlines to meet at times would really be relying on the gallery's information to just gather basic data to begin thinking through exhibitions. Having been a curator before, it just always felt like this is too much, responsibility. Like we can do it and I know that we need to do it thoroughly, professionally, and accurately. Something doesn't quite sit well. This is independent research that should really, should happen not within the market sphere. Nevertheless, we need to do it right. these were never problems that were just about the single artwork to position and sell. They always needed to be looked at more holistically and understand what precedents were gonna be set in making certain decisions. It was the artist and the realities that all of them had, some of these realities shared and some unique that began to push me in a direction that was less about curating and much more about thinking about questions around how do we preserve culture around us.
[00:19:59] Cass: It's been about six years now that you have been focusing exclusively on this sort of legacy planning work. You've had the opportunity to work with some incredible artists. Who are some of the artists that you have carried through to your work now as an independent legacy specialist?
[00:20:16] Ursula: I would say, I mean, the first artist that my relationship began with Alexander Gray and it extended beyond by the time I left, was Lorraine Grady. I feel always very humble to have been able to work and continue to work with her. She is a unique mind that always makes you question. You constantly have to be on your feet she's been an artist that has always been, I think very legacy driven and minded, made very timely decisions in relationship to her legacy. Lorraine at some point likely thought that she was not gonna live long enough to see her work recognized as she would've wanted to. And the decisions that she made along the way, spoke to that. And one of those key decisions was to donate her analog archive to Wesley University. but Lorraine was an early, adopter of, digital information so starting in the, early nineties, she began to keep everything, in digital form and kept very little paper. She, trained as an economist and she was a ca analyst. So her archive is incredibly well organized, even though in her eyes at times it still needs a lot of organization. Having worked with artists, other artists archives is, impeccable is amazing how she has sorted decades and decades and decades. When we began working outside of the context of the gallery, she wanted to begin to think about placing her digital archive. I'm not a digital archivist myself, I felt that I needed to educate myself before committing to doing this for her. I needed to better understand what that meant. For me it was really important to think what does it entail to donate a digital archive? And what is the commitment that we should see from the host institution in receiving such a gift? It is very clear and straightforward when it comes to analog material, especially in the context of preservation. It's less so when it comes to digital matter. I would say the moment that I shift to working in the context of legacy, I found my peers to be incredibly generous and supportive with information. Part of why I also decided to leave the gallery world was because within our family context, within my husband's family, we had two artists estates and one in the making. Having worked with artists myself, it's certainly dawn on me. Like, what are we going to do as a family? I'm seeing it from a different perspective with the artists I work with, but I dunno what it looks like inside a family. And that was also a very important step because it looks very different from the two perspectives. And you do need to be prepared, when it comes to family questions that it doesn't matter how much you know about what needs to be done, it is always a very human, emotional sensitive, path for families that are charged with caring for artistic legacies. And then I had the great opportunity of working with Carolee Schneemann on her last year of life. I look back to those long conversations we have with both, always a tinge of sadness and, and great, joy. She was always a joyful being to be around. It was a brief, summer that we worked together, but, it was the way that I think I was able to connect with her and our ability to communicate and understand what she wanted, needed and visioned, was a gift, to me. It was the first time also that I, moved through the process of grief of having worked with an artist and then even though you're so close to questions around mortality, all the time, it was the first time I'd actually have to go through the actual act of saying goodbye and the emotional side to it. And then, in years now after her passing, having seen the show at the Barbican Centre in London, which is an incredible exhibition, and know that she would have been proud of that show, I had nothing to do with it. Remembering what she wanted to see and how she wanted her legacy to be remembered. And now seeing that exhibition, made me feel very happy for her to see that that happened in the way that she wanted. Artists legacies are as diverse as artists. So the idea that there's like a single way of doing it, or that even, you know, artists endowed foundations, there's an enormous amount of variety even within the field of foundations as to what work and what doesn't work. It really does have to come from the art itself and the spirit and the media and that informs what can happen or what should happen. There are some lawyers that are very experienced and are close to the arts, but even in such cases, you always need that extra step of understanding, the artist's intentions behind. The systems is in place are very patriarchal so for artists that I have worked with, like I work right now with Cecilia Vicuña, who is an artist that is very difficult to, classify, she really resists classification and it's not just that she says it herself. The, if you just look at the work, it is impossible to say it's just one thing. The systems that we have, in place, all of them want it to be clearly detailed or narrow to classifications that are easily understandable, that fit, databases that exist. And then for women artists, I think just questions around their marital status, what they can and cannot do. It continues to feel like disenfranchisement. It's critically at a structural level, and you have to be creative about understanding what are the problems at the root, and then try to figure out how do you resolve certain issues tied to legacy that still function you cannot be so idiosyncratic that it just is impossible for anybody else to understand or penetrate. And Cecilia, for me is an example of an artist that is a poet and an oral poetry and has sound and video and sculptures and drawings and paintings. So it's not just a matter of creating an inventory, there's a spirit to the work that if broken, it would, you know, really break what she represents as an artist.
[00:26:24] Cass: So something that you were speaking to a little bit, there was, um, the idea of scale, of what an artist winds up doing with their estate. You know, I would imagine it's a really, really small select few artists who have those kinds of resources, to create an artist endowed foundation. But what are the other options in terms of scale, when it comes to legacy planning for an artist? Are there things that an artist of any means can and should be thinking about and doing? they don't have, those kinds of means,
[00:26:59] Ursula: Absolutely. Maybe the 1%, if at all, will have the scale and capacity of the large foundations, which not surprisingly are, you know, very American artists. All of them, all these foundations exist within the American landscape. Maybe it's the fact that my training was on Latin American art. So, the questions around what is presented, perceived, collected, at the time when I started were very much. Constant debates around whether artists, from the sixties in Latin America were deserving of the same recognition as artists doing similar kind of work in the US. Fast forward years after and when MoMA reopens, Patty Cisneros has gifted an enormous amount of work from this period to MoMA and the first show they have is that collection. That shows that the landscape can indeed change, but you need an enormous amount of resources behind and that's not always possible. First thing is community and peer support and sharing of information, the more proprietary the information is, the less equitable the field will be. A lot of things can happen that don't require an enormous amount of resources. An example of that can be oral histories that can be conducted without a lot of money behind and can really help preserve memories of people that knew and met an artist. And that's another way of, legacy preservation that, many families that are not foundations, small estates that are maybe run by a single person, can be, an activity that can have a far reach effect, without meaning that it will cost an arm and a leg, or if you only, if you're able to have, a market, therefore you will be able to have the legacy. But I think that part of the problem is that the information in a few hands and it's not, accessible and shared. So one of the things I always say when I meet people, I, have a list of resources that I'm always happy to share of what books I've read, what exists online that is available to download for free and answers always really important questions. Like the Aspen Institute has done remarkable work around foundations, and they have all this information for free. The Joan Mitchell Foundation also has a lot of resources for free. So just starting with that, with the ability to access and educate ourselves and be supportive of each other if we do that across borders, across languages, we'll be moving on the right direction. Beyond that, the question of whether all artists are deserving of like a life in perpetuity legacy, I don't think that's quite the case. And I think there you know, I know artist one of them young, she passed away in 2019 and she was a working artist all her life. But I think her most important legacy was in the context of pedagogy. There are examples for me when one thinks about legacy, where it may not be the, objects that you care for, it may be what they did outside of the objects at times that really has lasting effects that one should continue to speak of, look back and, and use as examples, create grassroots, movements that can help legacies have a platform. Those are beginning to surface and it will take more time and communal interest in devoting resources that can be shared, that can enable legacies to be perceived from different angles. And then, Plans, you know, to support the development of either programming or activities that do not follow traditional paths. For artists that have the capacity, the ones that will have a foundation are very few and I think there's a lot around foundation work that is out there. So, I feel like there's enough to be guided by, but even in that context, the few that have foundations that are small and not well endowed are, still like very supportive and generous in speaking about the problems of sustaining foundations that may have financial challenges. And then there's like the in-between artists that may have important and, large bodies of work that may or may have not seen exhibition visibility, market visibility in their lifetime, and the practical aspects of caring for these objects after an artist passes away. my partner who, is in New York Anna Stothart and I work with an estate of a ceramicist, who was, not necessarily well known. and I think in that particular case, for example, the work was incredible. We decided to work with, his widow because we felt the work was incredibly compelling, but there was not a CV that, could help explain that he needed to be collected, but all top major museums in the United States. However, when we spoke with people that knew him, all of them spoke of how incredibly generous he was as a teacher and how much younger generation of ceramicists, got to learn about baking the clay and, the particular aspects of creating the work. So we decided to go in a different direction that was approaching university museums and art galleries where ceramic programs are important and to create a gifting plan with widow who was very keen on distributing the work. And it was a very successful, project. The universities were very keen, many of them knew of this artist. They either had met him or knew of the particular skills that he had developed and the kind of craft that invested himself. It doesn't mean a big gallery show or suddenly, exhibition in New York museum, but it does mean that the work will be touched and will be seen by younger students, whether they're in the art field or not. His message carries on and impacts future generations, and that has great value.
[00:32:54] Cass: You're somebody who has worked very closely with artists, both ends of their career, having worked in the curatorial and gallery space, and now legacies and estates. What is really the point that an artist needs to start thinking about what will happen to their work after they're gone?
[00:33:11] Ursula: When I work with younger artists, and by that I mean, people in their forties, I'm not working now with like, younger, artists in like in their twenties or out of school. When I say legacy, they immediately answer, oh, I'm not old, I'm not dying. And I almost always want to say like, well, you know, we are all dying and we are all getting old. Furthermore, like, we really do not know when we're gonna die. But I, don't wanna cast a, dark shadow on a conversation, but like, I'm Mexican so mortality is a very present element in my life. I am very comfortable talking about my own death and death of people around me. It brings, a particular sense of clarity. My husband's father was a painter in Austria, a very well known, painter. And he died when he was 49. so he died very young. His, wife is still alive, she's 82. She's also an artist, a photographer. So, one never knows when it comes. With younger artists, the realities of what will be legacy are very different. I think for the most part, artists in their seventies, eighties, that were not, recognized by the market in some way or another. They still hold a lot of inventory. So that's a challenge. storing, preserving, caring, and that won't be necessarily the case for younger artists. Even those that may not have strong markets may have less to contend with, because it moves in some ways. This may sound, totally separate from legacy, but I think there is a true imbalance in the art world this ecosystem that we live in wouldn't really exist without the artist. However, in the context of how the dynamics work, artists are almost always disenfranchised. They ordinarily have to negotiate on their own behalf, either with curators or with, their dealers. They don't have a lot of spaces to talk about problem solving. So I think amongst curators and my peers, especially my generation, I, I feel very lucky that I was always able to talk with other peer curators about, problems. Even like how do you ask for a salary raise? I would have people to go to and talk through that. Artists rarely can talk about whether they're selling and how much their work is selling for and what are the prices. No matter how you look at it, they're being asked to do a lot. So there's always pressure on artists, even for artists that are working at a different scale to, deliver, a checklist with captions and correct information and images. And for artists that are not very digitally versed, this is huge nightmare to put together a checklist for us that are more comfortable with software and cloud-based digital inventories, may not sound like a cumbersome endeavor, but for other artists, this takes hours and hours of administrative work. Control of their own information, I think is one of the few important tools that artists have. So rather than present to them, the question of, you need to care about your legacy because your art is important and they will influence future generations all this will happen in 20 years. Today what's important is that you care and guard and preserve information around the work in a way that empowers you so you're not dependent on third parties and others to keep, preserve, organize information for you and therefore, almost will be indebted to whomever's doing that work for you or, will have less access to information. One of the things I say to younger artists, they need to think about it. And it's not easy to do it nowadays because it creates a lot of administrative burdens to them and not all of them have the capacity to hire people to do it for them. And it's this, challenging environment in which a lot of it has to be digital, so they have to have a degree of digital versatility to do it. But it's almost like a reality, you don't have that, and you were not doing well and then suddenly you're doing well and you happen to be a painter. A lot of people may begin to profit on the secondary market and the artist will have no ability to have a sense of what's happening to their own work. It comes more from a place of empowerment and then that leads yes to making accurate and smart decisions in relationship to legacy for those that want to. And again, questions around the human essence come up. Do they have kids? Do they not have kids wives, or husbands? Do they want to do it or not? It can be grueling. All the children, these are, adult people that I've worked with. It can be emotionally taxing to do it. And for the most part, some may devote their entire lives to doing the work. And some others, may put some years and then step back. And it is a personal decision. It needs to be a decision. It cannot be an imposition otherwise. It comes with a lot of sacrifice it's hard for any person to give. The responsible thing to do, especially in places like the US is to write a will. everybody should do that. Especially if you have kids. I recently heard a talk by the son of Paula Rego who kept saying, don't worry my son, I will never die. It was funny 'cause he was joking about it, but he was truthfully saying she really, didn't wanna think about any of these issues and she really meant like she was never gonna die. And of course she did. And here I am dealing with all these problems. But like every time I tried to bring it up, she would just say, oh no, no, I will live forever. Don't worry. And it was joking and also it was a way of deflecting, you know, the very difficult reality of thinking of our own mortality.
[00:38:43] Cass: Mm-hmm. Something I'm realizing is that kind of tension of not wanting to face mortality necessarily for some people is something that I think, I actually personally don't have to encounter that much in my practice as a conservator, I guess because the mortality of time-based media art is painfully on the surface and obvious to the artist, and they've probably been, by the time we're working together, been through several iterations of the work already. Well, speaking of conservation, obviously it's something we talk about a lot on this show. I'm curious how conservation enters into or is in dialogue with the work that you do. Has it historically been something that you've been involved in? You know, obviously artists can be very involved in the conservation of their work, especially with time-based media. How does this get accounted for in legacy planning? What does this look like when it's an estate rather than the artists themselves entering in the conversation?
[00:39:39] Ursula: I would say at the time that I joined the Blanton, there was a very strict registrar working in the museum. These are the things that you wish they would have taught you in school. Like they never teach you how to handle paper or how to grab a work on paper to not, crack it. So when I joined the museum, She was like a mother superior. I remember I was a bit afraid of her, and she said, you cannot come into the drawing, center. We had a beautiful, drawing center that had immediate access to the storage area where all the works and paper were, stored. And the Blanton has an incredible, enormous works on paper collection. The Latin American collection specifically had a lot of important artists within that collection. And just because of how the collections were divided, the head of the collection was not a Latin Americanist, but it was, a, old master specialist. So he was even more strict in regards to how, how access was granted. Even as a curator, this registrar, taught me how to handle the paper, how to move things, how to, be conscious of what I was, grabbing. So I think the fragility of the object, the care for the object, began at that time when I was a young curator just trying to, learn about the collection. I think we're gonna look back and think of the conservation field as a field that really led conversations about estate planning and legacy. Many of the brilliant minds that have existed in that context were the conservators, trying to figure out the right answers for the objects, was almost like there was no blueprint. And I think the conservation field created a degree of a blueprint in some cases. when the challenges of working with late career artists is that they have the advantage of looking back so long as they're alive, it's still their work. However, the market has very different ideas of what they want and how they want certain things handled. so this tension between a living artist and the market's ideals of what has value in the context of history, has also been something that interests me balancing questions of historical accuracy with the ability for late career artists to continue to do whatever they want in a way that feels like it's in the spirit of their work till the day that they're unable to do it or they pass away, it should be, their decision. I've learned a lot about, colleagues in the conservation field, in different media, to pose the right questions to artists. So part of the work we do is to properly document works that are of a fragile nature or a changing nature and document intent. So not to try to detail to the point that it would make decision making very difficult to whomever is stewarding or caring for that legacy in the future. But that hopefully would provide enough guidance from the artist themselves, to answer questions and give a degree of latitude. So if certain materials become illegal or scarce that in the future, the work can either, disappear if that would be fine with the artist or be replicated in a different way, but that still holds the original artistic intent at heart. In a digital appraisal, of Elfie Semotan in her case, it has an analog archive and a digital archive. We don't have these beautiful contact sheets with the red crayon, the contact sheet for the digital work. preserving everything that we have, in the born digital material was very important. But also then how do we go about understanding decision making in the digital sphere when the contact sheet as a tool no longer existed. The digital appraisal was such a helpful tool in making us aware of what we needed to do and prioritize in the context of a digital photographic archive. That while we have, 50 years of photography, 25 of them are analog and we can learn from the analog archive to understand the digital, but it does not translate. In that regard, there's still a lot, I think, ahead of us. If we don't tend to digital preservation now and questions around digital archives, were gonna be in trouble. not a lot of people are thinking about this, but like the two thousands as an era where there will be a lot of vacuum given that people may not be prepared for it.
[00:43:50] Cass: So Ursula, we have taken this incredible tour of your career from curation and the gallery world to museum world to being an independent legacy specialist. Now that you have shared your glamorous life as a legacy specialist with our listeners who might wanna be getting into this field, do you have any advice for anyone listening who might be interested in getting into this line of work?
[00:44:16] Ursula: The legacy field, I think requires that you are flexible, open, and curious about issues that span from like the legal framework that you will adopt, reading contracts and wills, understanding issues around intellectual property and copyright. To the nitty gritty of archival work, even though you may not be doing it yourself, which I don't do. I always work with great partners. But it does require that you understand, the particulars. For people that feel themselves with a degree of understanding or different things, but not quite feeling in one singular role, this field definitely is welcoming of, the curious mind that is holistically approaching problems. It's very human so you, you get, the artist in their entire humanity. The good, the bad. The difficulty, the ugly, it's all there. I wish there was formal education around this kind of work, because. There's so much that could be easily be learned, but you can only access with a certain degree of, privilege or access. Like the Aspen Institute does wonderful, workshop for people thinking about establishing foundations or those that already occupy a position within a foundation. I almost wish there was a program that would expand on this beyond just the foundation world. I was very grateful to have learned from great colleagues in the field who I never really packed, but learn from them until I had to pack those are the things that I think that anybody should be able to do that could be part of a broader curricula. The other is to create community. 'cause the issues around legacy work can be shared across, borders, regions, languages. At times I think a problem that one person may have in isolation that may feel completely overwhelming, suddenly may feel less so if they're able to speak with somebody that already went through that and was able to find solutions, partnerships, great resources. One of the first things I always say is try to find the community. And there is, there's a great community in Oakland in California. There used to be an institute in Berlin that is not very active now. There are all the organizations around catalogue raisonné. Uh, There are people out there doing the work. It's more the impetus to seek them and to begin to build community, to, understand what, if you are personally caring for an estate, how you can do it. What has been done in the past that may apply to your particular case, or if you wanna support others in doing the work. Anybody that's interested, I'm more than happy to, give however many resources I have at my disposal and share them. I think a lot of it is trust building with artists. If artists trust a person, caring for that trust, respecting that relationship is part of where the work begins.
[00:47:11] Cass: That's great so we have talked a lot about the past and the evolution of your career, but I'm curious if there's anything coming next for you, anything, any exciting projects in the works that you wanted to share with the audience?
[00:47:27] Ursula: It's been a very busy time, you know, even with the pandemic, two years ago I partnered with, Anna Stothart who I knew long ago. We met when we were both in Austin, in Texas, and I think it began, she was my intern at the Blanton and we partner and established, a, company. So we are now a company that works for and with artists. We are working right now with, several female artists. Among them, Cecilia Vicuña, and Elfie Semotan, and Lorraine O'Grady and in each of their cases, there's something happening that is exciting in terms of what it means both for them, in their lifetime and then for their legacies. The three of them are very legacy minded. We're always very conscious of the work we do in the present. We'll fill in the puzzle in the future. Cecilia has had a, you know, 2022 was an incredible year for her and this year is equally exciting with retrospectives happening in Latin America. The republication of an important book that she did, that coincided with coup d'état in Chile. With Lorraine, we're working towards the placement of the digital archive and with Elfie, we are at a great point in terms of studio management and archive care. That has enabled us to really begin to go deeper into the archive from a research standpoint and from a curatorial standpoint, look at the archive across the board across decades, and to begin to think, in ways that her work has not been seen and presented. And on the other hand, we work very closely with museums to place works, in permanent collections. As much as private collectors are, important for the ecosystem, it's really critical that in museums are able to acquire work by artists, that have moved us, that are culturally significant and not all artists that are culturally significant have strong markets. So what we have, worked towards is artists that we know have impacted us, our generation, there's curatorial support for artists that have been very important but have no gallery representation or may have very little market presence, is to work with them to identify key even works within still within their collection and to work towards placement to be very diligent, but very careful about what that looks like. And it's really thinking about what, that means in 50 years time. not to put aside financial need. Definitely, any possibility of sale. I think artists are always happy to feel like there's, some financial support that comes with that. A lot of them, it really is about the presence of a work of art in collections that will, care for them in perpetuity. That has great value. That's kind of what this year is looking like for us. It combines more exhibition and research driven projects with these more slow and careful work of placement that we feel is at the core of what we do and important to do. Working with trusted people has been key to doing this kind of work. I don't do the archiving, I don't create the databases. I always rely on people that know more than I do. I try to create also teams that continue to support artists. So artists can also choose to stop working with us, and part of the goal is for them to have the tools that they need and to have a team that will be with them. It's not to create a dependency of our relationship, but rather to create empowerment and independence. That's key to the job, to the work, to know where our limits are in terms of what we can and kind of do not to try to do it all and to build community around people wanting to be in proximity with artists and empower them to do the work for them.
[00:51:08] Cass: Love it. Ursula, thank you so much for your time and coming on the show and just sharing this perspective on this like really, really niche and super critical role within, the legacy ecosystem. I think our listeners will really enjoy hearing this. So thank you so much.
[00:51:22] Ursula: Thank you for the invitation and thank you for creating these amazing podcasts because I think a lot of what is discussed in very specific environments, you're sharing publicly, so the podcast has become an incredible resource I think that will, sustain us for decades to come. Hopefully.
[00:51:38] Cass: And thank you, dear listener for joining me for this conversation with Ursula Davila-Villa. This episode was edited by Tessa hall and yours truly. As always, if you like what you're hearing on the show listener support is hugely important to making it all happen. You can always join us over at patreon.com/artobsolescence. Or if you are interested in making a one-time tax deductible gift through our fiscal sponsor, the New York Foundation for the Arts, you can do that over at artandobsolescence.com/donate. And there you can also find the full episode archive, including full transcripts and show notes. And last but not least, you can always find us on social media @artobsolescence until next time take care of my friends. My name is Cass Fino-Radin, and this has been Art and Obsolescence.