Post by Sylvain Levy

A collection can survive war, exile, and the market. What it rarely survives is an unwritten transmission. Merzbacher spent decades assembling color and conviction; what was never assembled with equal rigor was the governance of what comes after. A handwritten codicil is not a transmission architecture — it is an invitation to litigation. The lesson for every collector: the will is the weakest document in the chain. Legacy is not what you leave; it is what you organize while you can still explain it. The Kunsthaus loan runs to 2038. The real deadline was earlier.