Etched in Memory: Legacy Planning for Artists

“Etched in Memory: Legacy Planning for Artists” is a web resource designed to assist artists in preparing for and protecting their professional legacy through sound planning and archival practices. All artists face the issue of building and maintaining their artistic reputations and creative output. Artists can assist their surviving partners, family and friends with decisions on financial issues and estates, as well as the disposition of their personal papers, business records and artwork.

Some of the resources found here are the result of a one-day symposium held in the Scholarly Communication Center (SCC) at Alexander Library on the College Avenue Campus of Rutgers in New Brunswick, on Friday, March 20, 2009.

Marilyn F. Symmes
Director, the Morse Research Center for Graphic Arts, the Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum, Rutgers, Moderator

She has organized such exhibitions as “Alone Together: People in American Prints” (2007); “Calculation & Impulse: Abstract American Prints” (2007); “From Here to the Horizon: American Landscape Prints from Whistler to Celmins” (2008); “Pop Art and After: Prints and Popular Culture” (2008); and “Inspired by Literature: Art and Fine Books” (2008-09). She also co-curated “Dark Dreams: The Prints of Francisco Goya, A Selection from the Collection of the Arthur Ross Foundation” (2008), and is preparing a major retrospective exhibition of Joan Snyder’s prints. Ms. Symmes has held posts and organized shows at the Detroit Institute of Arts, the Toledo Museum of Art, and the Cooper-Hewitt. She also executed a major print research project for the Terra Foundation for American Art in Chicago, and served as the New York area collector for the Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution. Her publications include “Fountains: Splash and Spectacle, Water and Design from the Renaissance to the Present”; “Silent Scrutiny: Self Portrait Prints,” for the Wellesley College Davis Museum and Cultural Center’s catalogue “American Identities: Twentieth-Century Prints from the Nancy Gray Sherrill (Class of 1954) Collection”; and “Impressions of New York, Prints from the New-York Historical Society,” as well as catalogues on American drawings and artist-illustrated books. She was guest curator for the exhibition “Once Upon the Page: Illustrations by Cos Cob Artists for the Historical Society of the Town of Greenwich” (2007- 08) and wrote the related catalogue. Her book, Fountains, A Visual Sourcebook, will be published in 2010-11. Ms. Symmes is currently on the advisory boards of the Brodsky Center for Innovative Editions at Rutgers, as well as New York’s Lower East Side Printshop. She has previously served on the boards of the Print Council of America and the International Confederation of Architectural Museums.

Etched in Memory logo features Miriam Schapiro's "In the Land of Oo-bla-dee: Homage to Mary Lou Williams," 1993. Courtesy of the Brodsky Center for Innovative Editions.	The original symposium was sponsored by the Institute for Women and Art (IWA) at Rutgers in partnership with the Rutgers University Libraries. The IWA operates under the auspices of the Office of the Associate Vice President for Academic & Public Partnerships in the Arts & Humanities. These events are made possible in part by funds from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts/Department of State, a Partner Agency of the National Endowment for the Arts. The Etched in Memory Project Team included: Dr. Ferris Olin, Principal Investigator; Nicole Plett, Project Manager; Joe Namashe, Videographer; Ricki Sablove, Symposium Organizer; Katherine Scott, Symposium Organizer and Web Site Developer.