Loretta Wurtenberger describes turning the Hans Arp estate in a new direction

“Sell as little as possible but as much as necessary.” --Loretta Wurtenberger on the Arp estate's guiding principle. Loretta Wurtenberger is one of the founders of the Institute for Artists’ Estates (http://www.artists-estates.com/)and has been managing the estate of Hans Arp since 2009. The prospect of managing artists’ estates has become a new topic lately, so we’re presenting the audio of Dr. Wurtenberger’s talk from the Keeping the Legacy Alive conference held in Berlin in September of 2016. Entitled Back to Square One, Wurtenberger’s talk describes the seven-year odyssey the Hans Arp estate made from controversy over posthumous casts to a vibrant discussion of the artist in the academic world, museums and on the art market. The talk begins with a brief biography of Arp, the conditions of the from Arp’s death in 1966 through the mismanagement of a German dealer and the controversies surround posthumous castings. In 2009, when Wurtenberger took over the the strategic management of the estate, Arp was out of fashion. There was no academic interest; the Catalogue Raisonné was out dated; the last US exhibition of the artist had been in the 1980s; and Arp’s work was undervalued on the art market. Wurtenberger helped the foundation focus on repositioning Arp through sponsoring academic research, enabling museum exhibitions not only of the best known blockbuster works by Arp but also of the lesser known works held by the estate, and by enhancing the artist’s market in Europe and the US. Finally, Wurtenberger explains that the Arp foundation is not legally allowed to have an endowmen t. So it must sell from its holdings enough each year to cover the annual expenses.

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