The new website POBA: Where the Arts Live offers to “promote and preserve the creative work of exceptional artists who have died without recognition of the full measure of their talents or creative legacies.” Hyperallergic explains:
At a starting annual rate of $49.95, the web-based nonprofit essentially provides a platform for grieving families (and estate managers or anyone else who owns the right to a creative legacy) to publish and expose their dead loved ones’ lasting artistic expressions.
Though POBA is a program of the nonprofit James Kirk Bernard Foundation, it’s odd to think of the website as entirely non-profit when it charges fifty bucks to post your deceased loved one’s work into digital galleries on a sparsely populated network. Additional services are listed in the “concierge” section of the website:
POBA can provide the help you need to get your artist’s legacy organized, catalogued, archived, preserved, digitized, displayed, appraised, marketed, promoted and /or sold. POBA can help take your artist’s legacy from garage to gallery, and offer assistance at any stage in between.
The services seem useful in a utilitarian way, particularly in how the bereaved can legally benefit from potential sales of the artwork by the deceased. However, the idea that the work — like a highlighted drawing of The Sad Clown by Pete Ham from Badfinger — is going to go straight “garage to gallery.”
