This June, a two-day event at the Albuquerque Museum connects artists with archivists, attorneys, curators, and fellow artists to build real strategies for long-term legacy planning.
Legacy Lab New Mexico
June 13–14, 2026
Albuquerque Museum
What happens to an artist’s work, archives, and intellectual property over time? Or, as many artists ask candidly: “what am I going to do with all this stuff?”
Questions like this are becoming more common—and more urgent—as artists face significant legacy-related challenges: long-established galleries are closing, museum collections are at or beyond capacity, acquisition funds are dwindling, and federal support for the arts and humanities is at an all-time low.
Albuquerque-based arts editor and writer Nancy Zastudil created Legacy Lab New Mexico to help artists of all kinds in the region find answers to these questions by thinking strategically about the long-term stewardship of their work. The two-day event connects artists with experts in archives, law, museums, collections management, and publishing, and equips them with practical tools to organize, protect, and sustain their creative legacies.
The event’s keynote will be delivered by Ruby Lerner, founding executive director of Creative Capital, a nationally recognized organization that provides funding and advisory support to artists. The day continues with four panel discussions with prominent artists and arts professionals such as Neal Ambrose-Smith (Confederated Salish and Kootenai Nation, artist, research consultant and program developer for Joan Mitchell Foundation’s CALL program), Sherri L. Burr (author and Dickason Chair and Regents professor emerita, University of New Mexico School of Law), Josh T. Franco (Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution), Delilah Montoya (artist), William Gassaway (assistant curator, Albuquerque Museum of Art), Yann Novak (artist, composer, and technologist), Amanda Ross-Ho (artist and Trellis Art Fund Milestone Grant awardee), Paula Wilson (artist and co-founder of MoMAZoZo), and others, all of whom will discuss topics ranging from archiving creative work and managing intellectual property to working with museums and estate planning.
The second day will offer three intensive workshops for selected New Mexico artists who want to begin actively planning and organizing their artistic legacies. Participation in the workshops is application-based and offered on a sliding-scale fee structure to support accessibility for artists at different stages of their careers.
Legacy Lab attendees will leave with concrete next steps for their own legacy planning and connections to ongoing resources. Zastudil anticipates that Legacy Lab New Mexico will generate new initiatives and spark broader conversations in New Mexico’s arts community about the importance of preserving cultural contributions for future generations.
Learn more and register for Legacy Lab New Mexico.
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