Image: Mock-up draft of the Artist’s Contract by Seth Siegelaub, 1971.
Wednesday, June 10, 2026
7:00 – 8:00 PM
Afterlife of The Clock Wife, Part 3: Estate Administration with MARJA BLOEM and LAUREN VAN HAAFTEN-SCHICK
This is the third and final instalment (for now) in the Afterlife of the Clock Wife, a series of events accompanying our recent exhibition on artist estate management that tries to extend the life of an exhibition beyond the duration of its presentation. For this online talk, curator Marja Bloem will join us to build on her contribution to the exhibition by further unpacking her late partner Seith Siegelaub’s work around the working conditions of artists.
Joining her from New York is Lauren van Haaften-Schick, whose teaching and research concerns artists’ rights, from artist-developed contracts to legislation and creative challenges to social injustice. Van Haaften-Schick will present Siegelaub’s now infamous Artist’s Reserved Rights Transfer and Sale Agreement—unpacking its key terms, its creation, and its influence since first being penned in1971—as well as a lesser-known and later project that highlights Siegelaub’s evolving investment in art law. Afterwards, the pair will be in conversation with our director Isabelle Sully, expanding on the talk and discussing the establishment of the Stichting Egress Foundation—an administrative body started by Siegelaub to bring together different fields of interest before his passing and continued now by Bloem as she oversees his estate. This event therefore unpacks the afterlife of an artwork, attempting to navigate the legal realities that come with both making, purchasing and inheriting artworks and the legacies of artists that accompany them.
To join, please e-mail info@a-tub.org and we will provide you with a link closer to the date.
Biographies
MARJA BLOEM (1944, the Netherlands) is an art historian and former curator of the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, where she specialised in art since the 1960s. She is now active as exhibition maker, author and director of the Egress Foundation, which takes care of the legacy of Seth Siegelaub. She was a board member of Kunstverein, Amsterdam, and an advisor of the Mondriaan Fonds.
LAUREN VAN HAAFTEN-SCHICK is an Assistant Professor of Teaching in the Arts Administration program at Teachers College, Columbia University. Lauren’s teaching and research concerns artists’ rights, from artist-developed contracts to legislation and creative challenges to social injustice. Her in-progress book charts the creation and uses of the iconic Artist’s Reserved Rights Transfer and Sale Agreement developed by conceptual art dealer and curator Seth Siegelaub in 1971. She holds a PhD in Art History & Visual Studies from Cornell University and worked in galleries and arts nonprofits for many years prior. She has published in Grey Room, Panorama, The Journal of Cultural Economics, and elsewhere, and she is co-editor of Seth Siegelaub: “Better Read Than Dead,” Writings & Interviews, 1964–2013 (2020).
Support
This event has been made possible thanks to the Pictoright Fonds.