http://www.rauschenbergfoundation.org/

Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, New York, NY (2026)

08/26/2026

Happy from the Rauschenberg Foundation! Rauschenberg’s dogs were a fixture in his homes and studios, sharing space with Rauschenberg’s many collaborators and often camouflaging themselves amongst the artworks. Scroll through for some highlights of his four-legged assistants at rest and stealing the spotlight!

Image 1: Robert Rauschenberg with his dogs on the porch of the Gulf House, Captiva, 1984. Photo credit: F.P. Denys.

Image 2: Robert Rauschenberg’s dog Star with “Tibetan Miami Glyph” (1987). Photo credit: Unattributed.

Image 3: Robert Rauschenberg, with his dog Laika, working on a transfer drawing in his 381 Lafayette Street studio, 1968. Photo credit: Shunk-Kender © J. Paul Getty Trust

Image 4: Sheryl Long Pharr, Tim Gault, Robert Rauschenberg, Sidney Felsen, Tim Pharr, unidentified person, Peter Wirth, and Rauschenberg’s dog Cloud in Rauschenberg’s print shop, ca. 1977. Photo credit: Terry Van Brunt

Image 5: Robert Rauschenberg with his dog Laika on the roof of his home and studio at 381 Lafayette Street, 1968. Photo credit: Shunk-Kender © J. Paul Getty Trust

08/25/2026

In 1959, Rauschenberg wrote: “A pair of socks is no less suitable to make a painting with than wood, nails, turpentine, oil and fabric.” During the 1950s and ’60s he became known for bringing found and ordinary materials into artworks that merged aspects of painting and sculpture. This group of works became his “Combines.” Here are four examples that feature found fabric, from an old sock to a full quilt.

In a 1988 interview with Mary Lyn Kotz, Rauschenberg credited his unique use of collaged fabric to his mother, Dora. He said he was used to “not wasting anything, like my mother in that sense. I was embarrassed all through school by the fact that she made all my shirts. I appreciated the fact that she did it, but she did it with remnants, the smallest pieces of fabrics. [...] And so I think that collage instinct, the reusage of things, […] —comes from my mother.”

Images 1 and 2: Rauschenberg, Untitled, ca. 1955 (and detail). Combine: oil, house paint, paper, fabric, and printed reproductions with sock and parachute on canvas. The Art Institute of Chicago

Image 3: Rauschenberg, “Bed,” 1955. Combine: oil and graphite on pillow, quilt, and sheet, mounted on wood support. The Museum of Modern Art, New York

Image 4: Rauschenberg, “Charlene,” 1954. Combine: oil, charcoal, paper, fabric, newsprint, wood, plastic, mirror, and metal on four Homasote panels, mounted on wood with electric light. Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam

Image 5: Robert Rauschenberg, “Hymnal,” 1955. Combine: oil, paper, fabric, printed paper, printed reproductions, and wood on fabric with telephone directory, metal bolt, and string. Private collection

08/21/2026

Can’t get enough of “The Odyssey”? Robert Rauschenberg’s interest in classical imagery and mythology is evident throughout his oeuvre, and he clearly admired his friend Donald Saff’s commitment to classicism in Saff’s mixed-media installation “Zeus-Haybird,” begun in 1986 and completed in 1989.

Saff and Rauschenberg became close friends and creative partners over a decade prior through Rauschenberg’s collaborations with Graphicstudio, the printshop Saff founded in 1968 at the University of South Florida in Tampa. Saff also served as Artistic Director of the Rauschenberg Overseas Culture Interchange (ROCI) project (1984-91). The year Saff began “Zeus-Haybird,” Rauschenberg penned the statement “Rambling Dissertation on Zeus Haybird,” underscoring the work’s “classical heroism” and mythic associations.

Combining assemblage, sculpture, and painting, “Zeus-Haybird” comprises a fiberglass temple and two pedestals supporting a blindfolded cow and a chair balanced on one leg. The metopes of the frieze girding the main structure, modeled after a classical temple in Paestum, Italy, feature portraits of Saff’s wife Ruth, family members, and other artists, including Rauschenberg, Roy Lichtenstein, and Jim Rosenquist. Rauschenberg reportedly suggested the title “Zeus-Haybird,” adding to the litany of questions inspired by the artwork’s mystical juxtapositions and playfully opaque metaphors–as resistant to interpretation as Rauschenberg’s own works.

Image 1: Donald Saff, “Zeus-Haybird,” 1986-89. © Donald Saff

Image 2: Robert Rauschenberg's handwritten notes for a statement on Donald Saff’s "Zeus-Haybird,” 1986

Image 3: Rauschenberg’s handwritten draft of “Rambling Dissertation on Zeus Haybird,” 1986

Image 4: Rauschenberg and Donald Saff, circa 1972. Photo: Unattributed

08/18/2026

Financial Times takes a closer look at Robert Rauschenberg’s fascination with flight in a new review of “The Ascent of Rauschenberg: Reinventing the Art of Flight,” on view through July 2027 at the recently refurbished Flight and the Arts Center at the Smithsonian’s National National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C.

Click the link in bio to read the full story, in which Neville Hawcock explores how Rauschenberg transformed flight from a subject of fascination into a powerful source of artistic experimentation, invention, and possibility.

Image 1: Robert Rauschenberg working on his portrayal of the Discovery Space Shuttle, Cape Canaveral, Florida, August 1984. Photo credit: Theo Westenberger

Image 2: “White Walk” from the “Stoned Moon” series (1970)

Image 3: Robert Rauschenberg at Cape Kennedy (as it was then known) as a NASA Art Program artist in 1969, with the Apollo 11 launch site in the background. Photo credit: James Dean

Image 4: “Sky Garden” from the “Stoned Moon” series (1969)

Image 5: “Space” from the “Tribute 21” series (1994). Photo credit: James Nelson

08/12/2026

In 2001, Rauschenberg wrote: “You are the author…In this group of works there are no mistakes nor right, nor wrong…Move fearlessly with love.”

Using the same transfer process that Rauschenberg had employed since 1992, the “Short Stories” (2000–2002) were made by transferring digital color images—made on an inkjet printer—onto polylaminate panels. Motifs drawn from nature are layered with the artist’s signature images, including trucks, telephone poles, and road signs. As if referring to a book, the titles of the works are page and paragraph numbers. Viewers are meant to engage with the imagery as they would with the words in a book or short story.

Read more of Rauschenberg's writings in “I Don’t Think About Being Great: Selected Writings by Robert Rauschenberg," published by Yale University Press and the Rauschenberg Foundation in 2025.

Images 1 and 2: Rauschenberg’s: “Page 6, Paragraph 2 (Short Stories),” 2000 and “Page 39, Paragraph 10 (Short Stories),” 2001. Photos: Ron Amstutz.

Image 3: Robert Rauschenberg’s handwritten draft of a statement “Short Stories: You Are the Author,” 2001. Robert Rauschenberg papers. Robert Rauschenberg Foundation Archives, New York.

Image 4: Robert Rauschenberg working on the Short Stories series (2000-02) in his studio, Captiva, FL, United States, August 2000. Photo: Ed Chappell. Photograph Collection. Robert Rauschenberg Foundation Archives, New York.

08/10/2026

This summer, the Foundation Archives welcomed five residents from across North and South America, the Netherlands, and Italy for intensive archival research on Robert ’s life and artistic practice.

Roberta Minnucci, Lesley Loksi Chan, Martha Jager, Nika Elder, and João Eduardo Peçanha de Freitas enlivened the Archives with their enthusiasm and curiosity, sparking constant dialogue across topics and disciplines. Although each investigated disparate questions, the residents’ explorations illuminated new or unconsidered aspects of their–and their peers’-research and bridged such diverse areas of focus as the Rauschenberg Studio’s collection of fan letters, Rauschenberg’s unrealized “Stoned Moon Book” (1970), the use of collage and print media in the Dante drawings and other works, his travels throughout the Mediterranean, and AIDS activism in the 1980s-90s.

Image 1: Roberta Minnucci, Martha Jager, and Lesley Loksi Chan with Rauschenberg’s “Lunar Cycle Early Winter Glut” and “Morbid Orbit Late Winter Glut” (both 1987)

Image 2: Nika Elder and João Eduardo Peçanha de Freitas in the Foundation Library

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08/07/2026

For the first time since the beginning of the Art Car initiative fifty years ago and after a global anniversary tour to over thirty countries, all twenty Art Cars are currently reunited in Munich in an exhibition at the Museum. Open to the public through August 31st, these “rolling sculptures” were designed by the likes of Robert Rauschenberg, Roy Lichtenstein, Jenny Holzer, Alexander Calder, David Hockney, Julie Mehretu, and David Hockney (to name just a few).

Rauschenberg's 1986 BMW 635 CSi reflected his longstanding interest in bringing art into everyday life rather than confining it to museums. He covered the car with photographic transfers of works by artists such as Bronzino and Ingres alongside his own photographs of grasses and trees, turning an ordinary production car into what he envisioned as a "drivable museum."

Visit through the end of August for the unique opportunity to see the full series reunited!

Image 1: BMW Art Car Collection in front of BMW Welt. © BMW AG.

Image 2: “BMW Art Car #6” by Robert Rauschenberg, BMW 635 CSi, 1986. Photo: Enes Kucevic © BMW AG

08/04/2026

T: The New York Times Style Magazine has named Robert Rauschenberg's "Bed" as one of the "25 Sculptures That Define the Modern Age." Selected by artists Firelei Báez, Charles Gaines, Adam Pendleton and Arlene Shechet, along with Ruba Katrib, chief curator of MoMA PS1 the jury examined works by modern and contemporary masters alongside the definitions of sculpture.

"'Bed,' now in MoMA The Museum of Modern Art's collection, demonstrated that the boundaries between mediums — and between art and life — had become irrelevant amid the conceptual freedom offered by the postwar art world," writes Zoey Poll.

Read more here: https://nyti.ms/4wKpZ1C

Written by M.H. Miller, Phoebe Chen, Rose Courteau, Julia Halperin, Zoey Poll and Michael Snyder.

Image 1: Rauschenberg in his New York City studio on Front Street studio in 1958, with “Bed” on the wall behind him. Credit: Artwork © 2026 Robert Rauschenberg Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), N.Y. Photo: Kay Harris. Courtesy of the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation Archives, New York.

Images 2-3: Charles Gaines, Adam Pendleton, M.H. Miller, Firelei Báez, Ruba Katrib and Arlene Shechet, photographed at The New York Times offices on March 11, 2026. Photo Credit: Chase Middleton

Image 4, 5-6: Robert Rauschenberg's “Bed” (1955). © 2026 Robert Rauschenberg Foundation/Artists Rights Society (ARS), N.Y. Photo: © the Museum of Modern Art/licensed by SCALA/Art Resource, N.Y.

08/04/2026

Join us this Thursday evening at Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit - MOCAD to discover the literary side of iconic artist Robert Rauschenberg with "I Don't Think About Being Great: Selected Writings," the first-ever collection of the artist's written works. Artists Jonathan Rajewski and Amna Asghar join Francine Snyder, Director of Archives at the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation and editor of the book, for an unforgettable conversation.

A book signing follows the discussion. The book will be available for sale in the MOCAD store, and drinks and light refreshments will be available at the MOCAD Cafe.

More info: https://bit.ly/3RKAzXg

08/03/2026

On July 31, 1963, Robert Rauschenberg was traveling with the Merce Cunningham Dance Company () through California and stopped at a lodge in Big Sur. The Company’s touring program included performances in Los Angeles and Berkeley, but on the evening of July 31st a small group of performers, including Rauschenberg, staged a less “official” event for Big Sur's local residents.

Carolyn Brown, a dancer with the Company and one of Rauschenberg’s close collaborators, later recalled the impromptu performance in her memoir, “Chance and Circumstance: Twenty Years with Cage and Cunningham.” The hourlong program, structured by composer John Cage, spilled through the lodge’s dining and living rooms and included "bits and pieces... of Happening material," an improvisation by Steve Paxton and Barbara Dilley, excerpts from Cunningham's dances, readings from “Silence,” Cage's 1961 collection of writings and lectures, and Rauschenberg shaving his face beneath a table. The evening preceded the first Event—a signature Cunningham structure that draws together elements from various dances into a collage-like burst of activity—by nearly a year, leading Brown to coin it “Event-minus 1.” Brown and Rauschenberg had shared another unconventional stage just two months prior, when they premiered Rauschenberg’s “Pelican” on May 9, 1963, at a rollerskating rink in Washington, D.C.

In his own reminiscence, Rauschenberg explained how the event helped cover the performers' lodging and meals, describing Cage as an "expert with creative poverty."

Image 1: Robert Rauschenberg, Carolyn Brown, Shareen Blair, and Barbara Dilley perform “Event-minus 1”, Big Sur, July 31, 1963. Photo: Unattributed

Image 2: Shareen Blair and Robert Rauschenberg. Photo: Unattributed

Image 3: Full contact sheet, “Event-minus 1.” Photos: Unattributed

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