In 2025, the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation will commemorate Robert Rauschenberg’s 100th birthday with an international celebration of the artist’s expansive creativity, spirit of curiosity, and commitment to change. Kicking off in 2025 and continuing through 2026, Centennial activities will revisit Rauschenberg through the eyes of our time, foregrounding his prescience and enduring influence on generations of artists and advocates for social progress. 

Over the course of the Centennial year, special events will bring leading artists, activists, and scholars into contemporary dialogue with Rauschenberg’s visionary ideas on art, technology, environmentalism, and social justice. These events will activate the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation’s New York headquarters and the artist’s Archive, as well as prominent cultural institutions around the world. 

2025 and early 2026 will welcome a slate of international exhibitions—with seven major institutional presentations—and activities exposing the breadth of Rauschenberg’s transdisciplinary and collaborative practice. The artist’s wide-ranging and enduring commitment to philanthropy will be mirrored in a series of Centennial grants funding conservation, exhibitions, performances, publications, and public programs across the globe throughout the year. Major publications include the first release of a free online catalogue raisonné that expands access to Rauschenberg’s work in painting and sculpture as well as a new book on the artist’s writings, I Don’t Think About Being Great: Select Statements and Writings, to be released by Yale University Press in October 2025.

“The Centennial serves as not only a moment to reflect on Rauschenberg’s indelible legacy, but also as a catalyst for the century ahead,” said Courtney J. Martin, Executive Director of the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation. “Through these celebrations, our vision is to move his ethos forward and reinforce his relevance to artists, changemakers, and communities today and in the future. It is also our sincere hope that through our network of Centennial partners, people around the world will have the opportunity to experience Rauschenberg’s work in new and exciting ways and that they will join us in celebrating his pioneering spirit.”

Exhibitions and Performances

Throughout the Centennial year and beyond, exhibitions and performances around the world will present tributes to Robert Rauschenberg. By opening up the artist’s legacy to present-day interpretation, the Centennial embraces different understandings, forges cross-disciplinary connections, and creates opportunities for critical exchange.

Five Friends: John Cage, Merce Cunningham, Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, Cy Twombly

Museum Brandhorst, Munich | April 10 – August 17, 2025
Museum Ludwig, Cologne | October 3, 2025 – January 11, 2026

Five Friends focuses on a circle of artists who had a decisive influence on post-war art in the fields of dance, drawing, music, painting, and sculpture. John Cage, Merce Cunningham, Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, and Cy Twombly created a special connection between the artistic genres and media through their intimate exchange. With more than 150 works of art, scores, stage props, costumes, photographs, and archival materials, the joint exhibition by Museum Brandhorst and Museum Ludwig provides insight into the interplay between the five artists. 

The exhibition is based on the unique collections of both museums. Museum Ludwig has the most extensive Pop Art collection outside of the United States and owns key works by Jasper Johns and Robert Rauschenberg, while Museum Brandhorst houses a comprehensive collection of Cy Twombly’s works. In addition to the exhibition, site-specific music and dance programs will focus on the works of John Cage and Merce Cunningham.

Robert Rauschenberg’s New York: Pictures from the Real World

Museum of the City of New York | September 13, 2025 – March 22, 2026

Robert Rauschenberg’s artistic practice revolved around integrating “the real world” into his art, and he famously stated, “I want a picture to look like something it is.” This vision led him to incorporate found objects and photographs ranging from taxidermied animals to newspaper clippings into his work. In 2025, the Museum of the City of New York (MCNY) will celebrate Rauschenberg’s centennial with Robert Rauschenberg’s New York: Pictures from the Real World, an exhibition that explores Rauschenberg’s complex relationship with photography, particularly in the context of New York City. The exhibition will feature three sections: “Early Photographs,” “In + Out City Limits / New York,” and “Photography in Painting.” An interactive collage component invites visitors to engage with Rauschenberg’s innovative approach to image making. A companion book published by MCNY and Giles Ltd. will complement the exhibition.   

Robert Rauschenberg: Fabric Works of the 1970s

The Menil Collection, Houston | September 19, 2025 – March 1, 2026

This exhibition of more than forty-five sculptural works—including major loans from collections in the United States—is the first museum survey to highlight Rauschenberg’s innovative use of cloth, sail-like assemblages made with pieces of fabric. In the 1970s, he experimented extensively with the ways in which woven materials hold printed images, move in the air, respond to gravity, and capture color and light. The works in the show reflect his career-long interest in unexpected materials and the rich intersection of art, everyday life, and performance.

Robert Rauschenberg: The Use of Images 

Fundación Juan March, Madrid | October 3, 2025 – January 18, 2026

In February 1985, the Fundación Juan March organized the first Robert Rauschenberg exhibition in Spain. Forty years later, this exhibition analyzes a structural element in the artist’s work: the use of images and photography. Rauschenberg started using a camera at Black Mountain College, and in the 1950s, he collaged press clippings into his Combines (1954-1964). In 1962, he began using silkscreen to transfer images directly onto canvas. In both cases, he repurposed photographs published in the press, but starting in 1979 he shifted to using his own snapshots. This was a novel approach for Rauschenberg, resulting in the development of this artistic technique and new opportunities to disrupt traditional hierarchies and embrace concepts of random order.

Robert Rauschenberg and Asia

M+, Hong Kong | November 2025 – April 2026

This exhibition brings together a selection of major works Robert Rauschenberg produced during and in response to his time in Asia. An enthusiastic traveler, Rauschenberg was deeply impacted by the cultures with which he came into contact. His extended engagement with Japan began in the mid-1960s, and his residency in India in 1975 inspired new approaches to working with materials and colors. Following his first trip to China in 1982, he developed Rauschenberg Overseas Culture Interchange (ROCI), a global program of travelling exhibitions and cultural dialogues.

Robert Rauschenberg: Image and Gesture

Kunsthalle Krems, Austria | March 2026 – October 2026

Robert Rauschenberg: Image and Gesture is the first monographic museum exhibition dedicated to the artist in Austria, presenting a survey of about 50 works, mainly paintings, drawings and prints. The focus of the show lies in the combination of image and gesture in Rauschenberg’s work, using photographic materials of newspaper, magazine, and from the artist‘s archive for a painterly and graphically gestural transformation on the picture plane. The show will be accompanied by film and video material of Rauschenberg’s performative and collaborative art (Pelican, 1963; Open Score, 1966) as well as Art and Technology projects like the Revolver series (1967), and works related to global social activism (ROCI, 1984-91).

In addition to these institutional presentations, solo exhibitions at Gladstone Gallery, New York (May 2025) and Thaddaeus Ropac, Paris (October 2025) will celebrate the artist’s legacy in the Centennial year. Furthermore, the 2025 edition of miart in Milan (April 4 to 6, 2025), Milan’s annual modern and contemporary fair organized by Fiera Milano, will draw on Rauschenberg’s life and work as its curatorial theme, taking inspiration from the fundamental principles of his work—in particular, his commitment to dialogue and collaboration. In celebration of Rauschenberg's iconic designs for dance, Trisha Brown Dance Company and the Merce Cunningham Trust plan to collaborate to honor his work during the Rauschenberg Centennial.

Centennial Grants

In keeping with Rauschenberg’s commitment to collaborative and international engagement, the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation has invited institutions around the world with Rauschenberg holdings to honor the artist by mounting dedicated installations of his work from their permanent collections. To date, twenty-two institutions have received support related to exhibitions, scholarship, conservation, performances, educational programming, and more. Further details will be announced in the coming months. Recipients to date include: 

• Academy Art Museum (Easton, Maryland)
• Art Gallery of Ontario (Toronto, Canada)
• Brandhorst Museum (Munich, Germany) 
• Chrysler Museum of Art (Norfolk, Virginia)
• Cranbrook Art Museum (Bloomfield Hills, Michigan)
• Grey Art Museum, New York University (New York, New York)
• Guild Hall (East Hampton, New York)
• Honolulu Museum of Art (Honolulu, Hawaii) 
• Ludwig Museum (Cologne, Germany)
• Mattatuck Museum (Waterbury, Connecticut)
• Moderna Museet (Stockholm, Sweden)
• Nova Southeastern University Art Museum (Fort Lauderdale, Florida)
• Sheldon Museum of Art, University of Nebraska (Lincoln, Nebraska)
• Staatsgalerie Stuttgart (Stuttgart, Germany)
• The Glass House (New Canaan, Connecticut)
• The Menil Collection (Houston, Texas)
• Trisha Brown Dance Company (New York, New York) 
• Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza (Madrid, Spain)
• Vancouver Art Gallery (Vancouver, Canada)
• Virginia Museum of Fine Arts (Richmond, Virginia)
• Walker Art Center (Minneapolis, Minnesota) 
• ZKM Center for Art and Media (Karlsruhe, Germany)

Research and Scholarship 

Major publications and scholarly projects will be released in the Centennial year, further extending Rauschenberg’s reach and accessibility. The Robert Rauschenberg Foundation has embarked on an ongoing project to create a digital catalogue raisonné of the artist’s paintings and sculpture. The first volume, covering works from 1948–1953, will be published during the Centennial. Ultimately, the catalogue raisonné will cover Rauschenberg’s work made between 1948–2008, comprising approximately 3,000 artworks. The project is expected to take approximately twenty years to complete. To provide as many people as possible with the opportunity to access and engage with Rauschenberg’s oeuvre, the catalogue raisonné will be published online, free of charge, in a series of releases. In addition to the resources found in a conventional catalogue raisonné—artwork entries, provenance, exhibition histories, and bibliographies—it will also feature essays by artists, conservators, critics, and scholars to present a range of perspectives that is commensurate with the expansiveness of Rauschenberg’s thinking as well as his profound curiosity and openness to new ideas and ways of working. 

Further scholarly projects include a new monograph to be published by Yale University Press in October 2025. I Don’t Think About Being Great: Select Statements and Writings presents 100 passages from Rauschenberg’s little-known body of written work. Comprising correspondence, artist notes, testimony, speeches, and more, this collection brings to light the artist’s love of language and reveals the extent to which writing was central to Rauschenberg’s practice. The writings, illustrated with reproductions in the artist's distinct hand, are infused with visual and intellectual lyricism and span topics from the freedom of artistic expression to environmental concerns. 

Additionally, a new catalogue will accompany each institutional exhibition, further extending access to the artist’s work beyond museum walls.

The Foundation is also pleased to announce its annual open call for applications to the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation Archives Research Residency, a one- to three-week research intensive at the Foundation and its Archives located in New York City. The Robert Rauschenberg Foundation Archives, consisting of Robert Rauschenberg’s personal papers and the records from his Florida and New York studios, is the most comprehensive body of information on the artist’s life and career.  

For more information and continued updates on Centennial programming and news, visit rauschenberg100.org, and follow the conversation on Instagram (@rauschenbergfoundation) and Facebook (@rauschenbergfoundation). #Rauschenberg100

About the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation

The Robert Rauschenberg Foundation builds on the legacy of artist Robert Rauschenberg, emphasizing his belief that artists can drive social change. Rauschenberg sought to act in the “gap” between art and life, valuing chance and collaboration across disciplines. As such, the Foundation celebrates new and even untested ways of thinking.

About Rauschenberg 100

Robert Rauschenberg’s (1925-2008) strong conviction that engagement with art can nurture people’s sensibilities as individuals, community members, and citizens was key to his ethos.  The Centennial celebrations seek to allow audiences familiar with him and those encountering the artist for the first time to form fresh perspectives about his art work.

A year of global activities and exhibitions in honor of Rauschenberg’s Centennial reexamines the artist through a contemporary lens, highlighting his enduring influence on generations of artists and advocates for social progress. The Centennial’s activation of the artist’s legacy promotes cross-disciplinary explorations and creates opportunities for critical dialogue.

Media Contacts

Gill Harris
Sutton 
gill@suttoncomms.com

Laurel Megalli 
Sutton 
laurel@suttoncomms.com