Archive in Residence 2025-2027
Sheyla Baykal, Angels of Light, Gossamer Wings, 1973. Copyright Estate of Sheyla Baykal.
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AFELL is a private email and online discussion group regarding the labor and best practices in organizing, maintaining and leading artist foundations, estates, and family collections.
Members include those active in legacy planning for a specific artist or community as well as representatives of an artist's legacy entity such as an estate, foundation or trust. Goals are learning, networking, sharing resources and building community.
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News
With Soft Network, the Experimental Artists of the Past Get a New Life
The organization makes experimental and mixed-media works accessible to art lovers, curators and historians, chronicling elements of the art world that have for too long gone unseen.
By Elyssa Goodman • 10/25/24 4:41pm
Bankers boxes, flat file cabinets, archival portfolios—they’re all here, placed with intention and order, preserving the work of oft-overlooked yet exciting artists in Soft Network’s Soho office. Co-founded in 2021 by curator Chelsea Spengemann, now executive director, and artist Sara Vanderbeek, Soft Network is a nonprofit organization that “preserves and provides access to the work of vital yet often vulnerable experimental artists and those who care for them.” It does this by assisting artists and those managing artist estates—or legacy workers, as they’re known—in cataloging, storing, digitizing and exhibiting artwork through a two-year-long Archive-in-Residence program. This helps artists and legacy workers preserve estates for the future; the ultimate goal is not to house work permanently but to help the estate stand in the art world on its own.
Soft Network in the Observer
OFFSCREEN and Cultish are delighted to announce the winner of the first edition of the Cultish x OFFSCREEN Prize: Susan Brockman, presented by Soft Network.
A special mention was awarded to Lita Albuquerque, presented by Galerie La Patinoire Royale Bach.
Cultish is a platform for creative exploration born from a shared passion for the arts and exceptional craftsmanship. With Cultish, Publicis Luxe reaffirms its commitment to culture as a transformative driver for luxury, thus pushing the boundaries of artistic expression for brands
It is in this dynamic that Cultish chose to partner with OFFSCREEN, an event highlighting artists working with still and moving images, who present site-specific installations in dialogue with a unique space.
The partnership between Cultish and OFFSCREEN culminates in the awarding of a prize, recognizing the best artistic proposal exhibited during the 2024 edition. This Cultish x OFFSCREEN Prize is awarded by a panel of international curators invited by OFFSCREEN, joined by curators from Publicis Luxe.
