WYWH: 2026 CPAL Conference on Preserving Artists’ Legacies (Day 2 of 3)

June 18, 2026

By Ian Silverstein

On June 2, Day 2 of the Center for the Preservation of Artists’ Legacies (‘CPAL’) conference on preserving artist legacies hosted in the beautifully redesigned former studio and home of the New York artists Milton Resnjck and Pat Passlof began with opening remarks by CPAL director Joy Glidden in which she vividly framed the challenge faced by those tasked with preserving, or attempting to preserve, the legacy of deceased artists: “The dumpster,” she observed, “is the preferred method of storage of many dead artists.” It was a blunt and clarifying opening, and it set the tone for a day that moved steadily between urgency and pragmatism — a conference equally alert to the scale of what is lost when artists die without plans in place, and to the concrete legal, financial, and logistical tools available to those determined to prevent that loss. Now in its fourth year, the CPAL Annual conference  is designed to be a forum through which artists and those responsible for artists’ estates can benefit from the tools, resources, and community that CPAL works to develop and support. As their name suggests, it is an institution organized around the goal of addressing legacy challenges faced by visual contemporary artists and their life’s work.^[1] Their stated mission is to promote equitable solutions for the stewardship of artistic legacies.^[2]

Opening Keynote: Aging in the Arts

The morning’s conversation between Diya Vij, Commissioner of the NYC Department of Cultural Affairs, and Jane Hait, Founder and Board Chair of the Center for Art, Research and Alliances (CARA), set the pleasant and friendly tone that would carry through much of the day. Hait offered one of the day’s most memorable observations: “Museums are not designed to care for artists, they are designed to care for artworks,” a distinction with real consequences for working artists navigating the latter stages of their careers and the families or estates of those artists operating without institutional support. Vij, while opining on the state of the arts in the city and discussing developing support projects and initiatives, brought a data-driven dimension to the conversation. Discussing data collected by the city, she noted that, for the first time since tracking began, artists are leaving New York City at a higher rate than they are arriving. Although the message gleaned from the conversation was overall positive, Commissioner Vij painted a portrait of a city in transition and made clear that the need to support the artists aging out of the city ecosystem they helped create — the same ecosystem that many argue makes New York the city it is — is more prescient than ever.

Understanding the Fiscal Reality Behind Legacy

The first full panel of the day, moderated by Susan Reynolds of the Milton Resnick and Pat Passlof Foundation, brought together attorney Judith Wallace of Carter Ledyard & Milburn LLP, Julia K. Gleich of Artist Estate Studio, LLC, and independent appraiser and curator Sarah Kirk Hanley to address the fiscal realities that underpin, and too often undermine, artist estate planning. The conversation was practical, grounded, specific, and oriented toward the kinds of decisions that determine whether an artist’s legacy survives.

Leaning more towards an overview of best practices rather than a lesson on the economics of estate planning, several points emerged as especially useful. Panelists emphasized the importance of establishing clear ownership of works, removing ambiguity for those who will eventually be tasked with managing the estate, and preserving or establishing copyrights before they become contested. The panel was firm on one point in particular: when an artist dies, their market is fragile. Although the urge may be to sell off as much work as possible in order to get a quick payout or cover other estate-related costs, flooding the market with works from a newly deceased artist’s estate depresses prices and can permanently damage the market for that artist’s work, sometimes reducing it to pennies on the dollar. Although the conversation did not delve into the more technical elements of estate and legacy planning for artists, the concepts of “blockage” — the discount applied to large estates of works that cannot all be sold at once without affecting value — and “sunsetting,” the strategic limitation of sales over time, were flagged as important technical considerations for anyone in this position.

Equally damaging, the panel noted, is the informal divvying up of a collection among heirs without regard for market dynamics: an “eeny meeny minie moe” approach that is devastating to an artist’s long-term market viability. The panel also drew a distinction that is easy to overlook: tax reality and market reality are not the same thing, and estate planning that conflates the two tends to serve neither well.

When discussing the more cost-effective steps for preserving artist legacies, the panelists pointed to the underutilized potential of artist websites. A well-maintained website is a low-cost way to store and make an artist’s work visible to the public, addressing a small part of the two largest expenses for any estate: storage and labor. The added benefit of public visibility, namely keeping an artist’s work in circulation and in view, was noted as another more than useful benefit of creating a website.

Legal, Tax, and Financial Ramifications of Estate Planning: The Bobby Anspach Studios Foundation

The second major panel of the morning offered a granular case study in what it actually looks like to build a foundation around a deceased artist’s legacy. Moderated by Caryn Keppler of Offit Kurman, LLP, the session featured Alex Lee, Co-founder and Creative Director of ALPHAFLY.co, and Paula Baldoni, Executive Director of the Bobby Anspach Studios Foundation and Director of River House Arts.

Bobby Anspach, an Ohio-born, New York-based sculptor and inventor who tragically passed away in 2022 at the age of thirty-five, created sculptural machines with the animating goal of fostering human connection among those who experienced them. The Foundation created in his legacy has worked to preserve his spirit, even as it confronts the practical challenge of sustaining an institution built around an artist with no significant prior sales record, a challenge faced by many responsible for the estates and legacies of artists.

The financial reality of this situation is unsparing: without a market for the work itself, a foundation cannot be self-sustaining, and significant third-party funding becomes not a supplement but a structural necessity. The Bobby Anspach Foundation is unique in that it has received significant funding from the Anspach family, which has been used to build, fund, and support the Foundation. Although the funding is not permanent, the Anspach family’s donation was recognized as essential to the Foundation’s establishment and its ongoing efforts. When discussing the fiscal challenges of operating a foundation, Alex Lee observed, “diversity of access is key to maintaining the foundation’s viability.” He noted that this principle applies not only to funding streams but to audience, programming, and institutional relationships. The panel discussion focused on a success story that, while not without its challenges, serves as a valuable example of achievement. The panel explored what might be involved in a foundation-planning situation and provided a realistic perspective on the overall process. The Bobby Anspach case is a useful corrective to the assumption that founding a foundation is a solution in and of itself. A foundation is, rather, the beginning of a set of ongoing obligations that must be resourced and planned for accordingly.

Lunch with a Lawyer

The midday break featured a thirty-minute session with Michael Borger, Esq., LLM., of Borger Law, P.C., framed around what he called “demystifying the death of an artist.” The session offered a concise orientation to the legal and financial terrain of artist estates, beginning with the probate process, the procedure by which a will or instrument moves through the courts and becomes legally enforceable, and focusing on the difficult tax questions involved in estate planning. Borger spent significant time delving into New York State’s estate tax liability threshold, currently set at $7.3 million, calculated against the gross estate, including property, liquid capital, and gifts made within three years of death. Borger also addressed the strategic use of living trusts funded with life insurance as a mechanism for managing and transferring assets outside the probate process. The session was brief but substantive, and its demystifying ambition was largely realized.

Estate Appraisals for Visual Artists

The afternoon’s most attended session, with nearly every chair filled in a room of roughly seventy seats, was the panel on estate appraisals for visual artists, moderated by Deborah Spanierman of Deborah Gerstler Spanierman & Associates and featuring Sur Rodney (Sur), archivist and co-executor of the Geoffrey Hendricks Estate; Zak Vreeland of J.N. Herlin; and Isaac Alpert, Director of Estates at P.P.O.W. The panel, although titularly focused on estate appraisals, was in practice more centered on archives, the best practices for creating and maintaining them, and considerations for how the items and ephemera of an estate may be kept together or separated to ensure they are best cared for.

In discussion of best practices for ensuring all the items of an estate are placed where they should be or where the artist intended, Deborah Spanierman offered the Robert Ryman estate as a model of what thoughtful pre-death planning can look like in practice: meticulous record-keeping, clearly articulated wishes, and an established funding structure for the estate itself. This example highlighted a running theme throughout the day: plan ahead. This idea was emphasized in nearly every panel throughout the day. The more an artist can plan for while they are alive — e.g., what should be kept, what should be thrown away, who gets what when I die, how will storage and estate administration be paid for, do I even want anything preserved? — the more successful those tasked with preserving an artist’s legacy will be.

Despite the highlighting of proper planning, perhaps the session’s most resonant observation came from Sur Rodney, who emphasized that the relationship between those handling an estate’s archives and preservation and the artist’s family is built on trust — and that trust, once broken, is nearly impossible to restore. The session drew its attendance for good reason: for many in the room whose questions echoed a similar tone, “I am responsible for handling the estate of my friend, my spouse, my father,” estate appraisals represent the moment at which the consequences of prior planning, or the lack of it, become most concrete.

Copyright Protection and Rights Management

The final panel of the day, moderated by Amelia K. Brankov of Brankov PLLC, brought together Thomas Maddrey of the American Society of Media Photographers and Cameron Sterling of the Ellen Graham Foundation for a technical discussion of copyright registration, licensing practices, and the practical decisions artists and estates face in determining when, how, and whether to register works. The session was the most technical of the day, and during the Q&A became a lesson in copyright and general intellectual property law for those who were challenged by the second-year law school type discussion of bundles of rights and the purpose of registration. The panel was designed to educate beginners about what copyright is and the importance of protecting it. It served as a valuable conclusion to a day that had moved from conceptual discussions to practical applications.

Conclusion

The day closed with a brief Q&A with Joy Glidden on CPAL’s mission and programming, and she asked the few remaining attendees for suggestions on what the Center could do differently or better in the future. What this day of the 3-day Conference made clear, across its full arc, is that the preservation of an artist’s legacy is neither automatic nor inevitable: it requires planning, legal infrastructure, financial realism, and a network of people who know what they are doing and are trusted to do it. The dumpster, as Glidden put it, remains the default. Everything else is intentional.

About the Author:

Ian Silverstein (Center for Art Law Summer 2026 Legal Intern) is a dual-degree candidate at Rutgers University, pursuing a J.D. at Rutgers Law School alongside a graduate degree in Cultural Heritage and Preservation Studies, with a certificate in Intellectual Property Law. He is a painter and visual artist and has conducted separate research on emotional and aesthetic responses to art, subsequently working at the Norton Simon Museum, the Autry Museum of the American West, and the Academy Museum of Motion Pictures. His museum research has been supported by the National Endowment for the Arts, and he holds a certificate in Art as a Global Business from Sotheby’s Institute of Art. Ian’s illustrations can be seen in the New York Times shortlisted book by Andrew Shtulman, titled ‘Scienceblind: Why Our Intuitive Theories about the World Are So Often Wrong’.

Additional/Suggested Readings:

1. Career Documentation for the Visual Artist, ⁠Joan Mitchell Found. (last visited June 9, 2026).
2. Estate Planning for Visual Artists: A Workbook for Attorneys & Executors, ⁠Joan Mitchell Found. (last visited June 9, 2026).
3. Rauschenberg Medical Emergency Grants, ⁠N.Y. Found. for the Arts (last visited June 9, 2026).
4. Legacy Guide, ⁠Craft Emergency Relief Fund (last visited June 9, 2026).

Select References

1. About, Ctr. for the Preservation of Artists’ Legacies, https://www.cpal-info.com/about-us (last visited June 9, 2026). ↑
2. Id. ↑