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COMMUNITY TRUST FOUNDATION
Mission & Vision | The Living Trust for the Arts Foundation provides estate planning and studio management services to artists at all stages of their careers. It also offers a model of collectivized legacy planning to better support studio practice and philanthropic plans and to galvanize art world resources for future artists. In these ways LTA is building a deeply resourceful circular economy in which studio practice is supported through a broad offering of services, and artists’ artwork, real property and assets are protected in perpetuity. Together these collectivized assets become an artistic community trust able to be converted into grants, residencies, micro-finance and larger-scale lending tools to sustain active practice and sustainable futures for artists.
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Artists, regardless of market position, geographic location, or racial and gender identity, deserve access to resources and tools that will help advance and build equity in their careers. These same artists should also lead in telling their own stories and framing their place in the permanent cultural record.
The Living Trust for the Arts Foundation exists to give capacity and agency to artists so that they are able to make cultural and financial contributions to the art world both in their lifetimes and through their legacy. We recognize that as a democratizing enterprise, LTA is likely to be of most value to artists typically under-represented in art market and philanthropic structures. As these models rarely favor BIPOC, female identifying, and LGBTQ+ artists who together comprise a significant portion of the artistic community, our services are in demand and urgently needed. With this in mind, LTA will provide artists with what they tell us they need.
To assist a broader range of artists, LTA offers legacy and estate planning previously available to the privileged few. Here’s how:
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tiered membership that allows for more affordable and customizable services
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team of values-aligned arts professionals (curators, art historians, grant writers, appraisers, archivists, studio managers, etc.) to give individual, customized attention
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curatorial methodologies to help contextualize artists’ work
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financial & legal advisors to create achievable goals & develop long term legacy plans
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inventory, data management and storage
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fiscal sponsorship for studio and legacy projects
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divestment from evaluation based solely on market position
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Artists, regardless of market position, geographic location, or racial and gender identity, deserve access to resources and tools that will help advance and build equity in their careers. These same artists should also lead in telling their own stories and framing their place in the permanent cultural record.
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Structured as a collectivized trust, LTA helps individual artists to make deep and lasting contributions to causes of personal meaning. This trust will ultimately provide large, impactful philanthropic gifts to the art community on behalf of an amassed group of artists in ways unachievable with individual assets alone. In this way we ensure critical cultural material is not lost and a robust cultural seed bank exists in perpetuity for use by curators, researchers, collectors and the public.
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