"This is an engrossing and valuable work for collectors, scholars, and artists, which surveys the lives of important twentieth-century American artists and the management of their accumulated works by widows, families, and dealers. It opens a window into problems of taxes, wills and trusts, the inheritors' role in conservations, succession and interpretation, and the responsibility for preservation of our visual heritage."-Gerald Nordland, author of Richard Diebenkorn and former director of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Milwaukee Art Museum

"A completely new approach-finally we hear from those who look after the paintings and sculptures after the artist dies. Wonderfully eloquent and personal, this book is important, valuable, and totally engrossing."-Flora Biddle, author of The Whitney Women and the Museum They Made and former president and chairman of the Whitney Museum of American Art

"Anyone interested in the art world and the protection of lasting values (in all senses) will be fascinated by this compilation of interviews, each of which is accompanied by a lively selection of photographs of the artist, the studio, and the heir or administrator. All sides of estate legacies issue surface here: studio situations, painting methods, tax issues, personal relations-you feel you know all the artists, freshly."-Mary Ann Caws, Distinguished Professor of English, French, and Comparative Literature, Graduate Center, CUNY

Artists' Estates offers a fascinating journey into the complex and competitive art world through the distinctive lens of those who deal with the paintings, prints, and sculpture that artists leave behind after their deaths. Bringing together interviews conducted by Magda Salvesen, the widow of the second-generation Abstract Expressionist painter Jon Schueler, this unique book provides a window into the goals and desires, the conflicts and frustrations, and the emotional and financial strains that confront widows, companions, sons, and daughters as the heirs to artists' estates. The judiciously arranged and edited interviews also address the benefits and liabilities of foundations and trusts through the insights of lawyers, gallery dealers, and foundation directors.

Readers will explore well-known estates, including those of Roy Lichtenstein, Mark Rothko, Adolph Gottlieb, Milton Avery, Romare Bearden, and David Smith, as well as the equally intriguing legacies of lesser-known artists whose work came to the fore in the forties and fifties.

Together, the passionate testimonies of families and lovers, the measured voices of art professionals, and the more than eighty photographs offer an indispensable entre into the private and public worlds of art.

Magda Salvesen is an independent art and garden historian and is coeditor (with Diane Cousineau) of The Sound of Sleat: A Painter's Life. Diane Cousineau is a lecturer in English at Washington College, the author of Letters and Labyrinths: Women Writing/Cultural Codes, and a coeditor (with Magda Salvesen) of The Sound of Sleat: A Painter's Life.

Contents
Introduction
1. Formidable Antecedents
B. H. Friedman on Lee Krasner and Annalee Newman
2. The Widow Is the Memory
Anne E. Porter, Widow of Fairfield Porter
Yvonne Hagen, Widow of N. H. (Tony) Stubbing
Harriet Vicente, Widow of Esteban Vicente
Phyllis Diebenkorn, Widow of Richard Diebenkorn
3. The Uncertain Divide: Artist/Wife/Widow
Adelie Landis Bischoff, Widow of Elmer Bischoff
Charlotte Park, Widow of James Brooks
Regina Cherry, Widow of Herman Cherry
May Stevens, Widow of Rudolf Baranik
4. Unfinished Dialogues: The Artist and the Gallery
Jeanne Bultman, Widow of Fritz Bultman
Stephen L. Schlesinger on the Fritz Bultman Estate
Anne Arnold, Widow of Ernest Briggs, and Bob Brooks
Anita Shapolsky on Her Foundation and Gallery
Jeffrey Bergen on the Romare Bearden Estate
5. The Next Generation
March Avery, Daughter of Milton and Sally Avery
Christopher Schwabacher, Son of Ethel Schwabacher
Helen McNeil, Daughter of George McNeil
6. Foundation Samplings: SoHo and Southampton
Sanford Hirsch on the Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation
Michael Solomon on the Ossorio Foundation
7. Untimely Deaths
Peter Stevens on the David Smith Estate
Helen Park Bigelow, Daughter of David Park
Peggy Gillespie, Widow of Gregory Gillespie
8. A Certain Distance
Rae Ferren, Widow of John Ferren
John Crawford, Son of Ralston Crawford
Robert Jamieson, Companion of Leon Polk Smith
Joan Marter on the Dorothy Dehner Foundation
9. To the Future
Kate and Christopher Rothko, Daughter and Son of Mark Rothko
Stephen Polcari on the Archives of American Art
Ralph Lerner on Art Law
Jack Cowart on the Roy Lichtenstein Foundation
Notes
Index