ART CART: SAVING THE LEGACY Pilot Exhibition
Documenting artistic expression of 20th century artists over a lifetime for the broader community
ART CART: SAVING THE LEGACY is an intergenerational arts legacy project that connects aging professional artists with teams of graduate students to undertake the preparation and preservation of their creative work, offering both groups an educational experience that will help shape the future of our cultural legacy (www.creativeaging.org/artcart).
The project grew directly out of research by the Research Center for Arts and Culture. Published as ABOVE GROUND, this study of 146 professional New York City aging artists revealed that artists are, in many respects, a model for society, maintaining strong social networks and an astonishing resilience as they age. Yet 61% of professional visual artists age 62+ have made no preparation for their work after their death; 95% have not archived their work; 97% have no estate plan; 3 out of every 4 artists have no will and 1 in 5 has no documentation of his work at all.
With academic input from a Columbia University-wide partnership including graduate programs in Arts Administration, Art Education, Public Health, Social Work, Oral History and Occupational Therapy, in 2010-2011, a dozen student fellows spent the fall learning about working with the aging, ageism and stereotypes, health promotion, environmental studio assessments, wellness promotion, oral history techniques, and mastering Gallery Systems EmbARK software. In the spring, interdisciplinary teams of fellows each working with a single artist, provided six artists ages 68-93 with direct, hands-on support and guidance to manage and preserve their life’s work. Each artist had a working partner to assist and learn with him/her.
This exhibition is the culmination of a pilot project whose essence lies in the works themselves which are as varied as the artists, but also in the life stories, the experiential learning and the portrait of the older artist as a model for resilience, tenacity and a lifetime of meaningful work. As a 93-year-old artist interviewed in ABOVE GROUND said, “Art is what makes me live.”
As the only institution of its kind in the country dedicated to collecting systematic information and data on individual living artists, The Research Center for Arts and Culture is uniquely prepared to facilitate the essential documentation of older artists’ work. With its current data on over 200 aging artists and over 20 years of cumulative data on artists of all disciplines and ages, the RCAC has collective information to help justify and determine artists’ needs, and a substantial platform of existing partnerships and resources on which to build. The project will establish a replicable methodology and a comprehensive toolkit for the implementation of Art Cart in other communities throughout the country through a collaboration with the National Center for Creative Aging.
Joan Jeffri, Founder and Director
ART CART: SAVING THE LEGACY
Research Center for Arts and Culture
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