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Legacy Planning Tools

We believe that artists of all ages and career stages can lay the groundwork for their future legacies by crafting a long-term plan and adopting some basic tools.

Through the Creating a Living Legacy (CALL) initiative, we make available legacy and estate planning guides that provide artists and their supporters with professional guidance and practical tools for their legacy planning journeys.

Guides & Workbooks | Legacy Field Map | Resources on our journal

Legacy Planning Guides & Workbooks

Through the Creating a Living Legacy (CALL) initiative, we make available legacy and estate planning guides that provide artists and their supporters with professional guidance and practical tools for their legacy planning journeys.

Career Documentation for the Visual Artist

This free educational workbook provides a breadth of information and perspectives about legacy planning for artists, along with practical tools that support engagement with this long-term, and sometimes challenging, process. Also available as audiobook.

Estate Planning for Visual Artists: A Workbook for Attorneys & Executors

A guide for attorneys and executors assisting visual artists with estate planning and settlement, it includes in-depth sections on legal matters pertaining to intellectual property and copyright as well as estate vehicles, such as wills, trusts, and artist-endowed foundations.

Estate Planning for Visual Artists

This workbook serves as a guide to understanding the components and the need for the basic elements of an estate plan, as well as addressing artist-specific concerns, issues, and opportunities relating to both their physical artwork and their intellectual property.
A map of the continental USA with 100+ map markers dotted around the country

Legacy Field Map

Launched in September 2026, the Legacy Field Map is a crowd-sourced directory for visual artists and their supporters eager to learn more about legacy stewardship resources, nonprofit organizations, collectives, and initiatives across the United States. The listings are accompanied by a map, which charts a variety of legacy practices.

Explore the Legacy Field Map

Resources on our Journal

Browse various articles with resources for artists and their supporters on estate planning, career documentation, and more.

A book cover reading "Joan Mitchell Foundation, Creating Future Memory: Building the Field of Artist Legacy Stewardship" overlaying a collage by Troy Montes Michie, in which yellowed pages and faded photographs are laid out in an irregular but careful grid of strict verticals and horizontals.

New Report, "Creating Future Memory,” Explores How We Can Collectively Build the Field of Artist Legacy Stewardship

What happens to an artist’s work, archives, and ideas when they are gone? What r...

Heather Cox, a woman with light skin, short cropped gray hair and wire rim glasses, leans over and cuts undulating lines from a large sheet of white paper with an x-acto knife.

Estate Planning Questions for the Visual Artist

We've created a free worksheet that encourages artists to consider their legacy ...

In a studio space, Mario Martinez is visible from the neck down, next to a table filled with paint canisters and brushes, and a painting on an easel. To the right are utility shelves, holding sever long rolled canvases.

The Significance of a Contract or an Agreement

Throughout your art practice, you will no doubt engage a number of professionals...

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