Legacy Over Licensing: How Artist Estates and Museums Are Redefining Control in the Digital Age

By Josie Goettel

When an artist passes, their estate is tasked with two seemingly conflicting tasks: to protect an artist’s work by exercising exclusive rights over them, and to disseminate their artwork to the public to establish a lasting legacy and placement in the art world. This dilemma runs parallel to another issue an estate faces when managing a body of art: should they prioritize revenue or improve public access to art? In recent trends, the answer seems to be the latter.^[1]

Since earnest efforts started in the late 2000s and early 2010s, many art estates, foundations, and museums have moved away from traditional, restrictive image licensing and have moved toward open-access models for scholarly use, albeit at a revenue loss.^[2] The Robert Rauschenberg Foundation (RRF) serves as a key example of the movement to increase public access to art by loosening fair use policies.^[3] RFF's decision to ease copyright restrictions for non-profit uses establishes a new, philanthropy-driven model for estate management, prioritizing the artist's intellectual legacy and public engagement over short-term revenue generation.^[4]