Who hasn't wondered when she bent over museum display cases how this very drawing on a paper napkin, this inconspicuous notepad, made it into the artist's estate? Not infrequently, it is precisely such seemingly marginal artifacts that are noteworthy for research, while some have only an anecdotal value as memorabilia. Thus, the cataloguing, preservation and presentation of artists' estates always raises the problem of the valuation of the objects in the estate as well as the conflict between the most comprehensive possible preservation and the spatial, financial and temporal conditions for their conservation and research, which usually do not correspond to this. Depending on who is in charge of the bequest work - a state institution, private foundations or, as has been the case more and more often recently, galleries - the scholarly mandate, public interest, financial means and time horizon are also very different. How do archivists, curators, or younger artists view these questions? How are these delicate questions ("Is this art or can this go away") solved in practice? How can artistic estates be activated and become relevant for current practices? What are curatorial formats in which the public, research or other artists can be introduced to such bequests? What forms - appropriation, homage, mediation, artistic research - can such artistic and curatorial practices take?

Céline Manz (artist), Camille Chenais (curator Villa Vassilieff - Bétonsalon, Centre d'art de recherche, Paris), Thomas Schmutz (curator), Matthias Oberli (Head of Art Documentation, Swiss Institute of Art Research), Nadja Müller (Verein RestKunst Basel) discussed these topics and questions.

The eikones conversation series was conceived and moderated by Katharina Brandl and Claire Hoffmann. The conversation was conducted in English.