Honoring the Legacy: an Exhibition of Works Presented by ART CART: SAVING THE LEGACY

The story of ART CART: SAVING THE LEGACY is one of tenacity, resilience and positive aging where art, education, health, and aging intersect to provide a model for society (www.artsandcultureresearch.org/artcart ). In the mid-2000s the Research Center for Arts and Culture (RCAC) conducted the only research on professional visual artists age 62 and over in the New York City metro area. ABOVE GROUND1 found that 61% of professional visual artists age 62+ have made no preparation for their work after their death; 95% have not archived their work; 97% have no estate plan; 3 out of every 4 artists have no will and 1 in 5 have no documentation of their work at all.2 Yet, in many respects they are a model for society, maintaining strong social networks and an astonishing resilience as they age. ART CART is a response to this research, begun by six women faculty in higher education from the arts, education, health and aging. We all valued interdisciplinary, inter-generational education and saw too little of it in our practice. We saw advantages for our students to gain a grounding in both creativity and aging, learn basic health prevention principles, and take these lessons back to a variety of disciplines from social work and occupational therapy to art education, art history, arts administration, museum studies, art therapy, oral history, and dance education. We saw a model of experiential learning where students could put what they learned into immediate practice. For artists, we saw a way to keep their work from their greatest fear: the dumpster. We saw a mechanism to help them get organized, urge them to sign, date, and document their work, archive their digital records at Columbia University, obtain wills and estate plans,3 while participating fully in an inter-generational team where an artist, an artist-selected working partner and student fellows worked together towards the same goals. ART CART began with six artists and twelve students at Columbia University in 2010. By 2016, it operates both in New York City and Washington, DC, with 18 artists and 18 fellows. Alumni artists post-ART CART have secured lifetime achievement awards, grants, studio space, sales, gallery representation, exhibitions and a rejuvenated appreciation of their work across generations. And they are still documenting their work