MERCE CUNNINGHAM, one of the most celebrated and influential choreographers of the twentieth century, died at the age of ninety in 2009. In 2011, the Walker Art Center acquired his dance company’s collection of sets, costumes, and theatrical props, and in 2012, after a tour of farewell performances, the company was officially dismantled. Both the acquisition and the dissolution followed the scrupulous guidelines laid out in Cunningham’s groundbreaking eighty-nine-page Legacy Plan, which was publicly announced just weeks before his death. Keenly attuned to the paradoxes involved in preserving