Art Legacy Compass : Guidance for Managing, Downsizing, and Transitioning an Artist's Studio and Estate

What happens to an artist's or maker's studio and a lifetime of creative work?

Paintings, drawings, photographs, prints, sculptures, ceramics, textiles, tools, supplies, equipment, and records of exhibitions and sales accumulate over decades of creative practice. Visual artists, photographers, craft artists, and makers working in ceramics, fiber, glass, wood, metal, or printmaking often build studios filled with finished work, archives, and specialized equipment. Yet many leave little documentation or guidance about how these materials should be organized or inventoried when circumstances change.

When a transition occurs-retirement, relocation, illness, or death-or when an artist reorganizes the studio to make room to keep working, families, heirs, trustees and executors may face a studio full of artwork, craft objects, tools, and equipment with little understanding of what they are handling or how the work circulates in the art and craft marketplace.

Art Legacy Compass provides a practical framework for organizing an artist's or maker's studio and preparing for the management and disposition of artwork and studio assets. Through a structured nine-step process, the guide helps artists and craft practitioners document their work, create an artwork inventory, record studio contents and equipment, identify income streams, organize digital assets, and prepare instructions for executors and advisors. The book addresses key aspects of artist estate planning, studio documentation, and managing a creative practice.

The guide also serves those responsible for carrying out these responsibilities. Executors, heirs, attorneys, financial advisors, and arts professionals will find explanations of how artwork and craft objects circulate in the marketplace, why documentation and provenance matter, and how decisions about sale, donation, gifting, reuse, or disposal can influence financial value and the historical record of an artist's work.

The appendix provides practical tools, including inventory worksheets, meeting planners for conversations with attorneys and advisors, sample correspondence, and a checklist outlining the first ninety days of responsibilities if an executor must assume management of the studio.

Accessible and pragmatic in tone, Art Legacy Compass offers guidance for visual artists, craft artists, and makers, as well as families and professionals responsible for managing artists' estates, craft studios, and the disposition of creative work.

Mary Longe, who holds a certificate in Art Business from Sotheby's Institute of Art, London, helps artists and collectors navigate the art world. She lectures, coaches, and advises on art-legacy planning and collection management. A former executive director of Plein Air Painters Chicago and a practicing artist, she creates collage and plein air work that reflects the contemporary world, blending creativity with practical insight to support artists and collectors alike.