Robert Rauschenberg Foundation Announces International Partners Ahead of Centennial Celebration in 2025

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raisonné that expands access to Rauschenberg’s work in painting and sculpture as well as a new book on the artist’s unpublished writings, Don’t Think About Being Great: Select Statements and Writings, to be released by Yale University Press in October 2025.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, sitespecific 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, a solo exhibition at Thaddaeus Ropac Paris will celebrate the artist’s legacy in the Centennial year, opening in October 2025.