Vancouver Art Gallery acquires a monumental Robert Rauschenberg work

An important historic work by Robert Rauschenberg has entered the collection of Vancouver Art Gallery. The Canadian institution has received a promised gift from collectors Brigitte and Henning Freybe, including Rauschenberg’s Sea Cow Treaty (Spread) (1977). The monumental work, which encompasses a working water feature, will be shown for the first time in a museum setting, with support from the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, on the centennial of the artist’s birth in 2025.

Over the course of his 60-year career, Robert Rauschenberg's work was inspired by wide-ranging experiences, lifelong collaborations, and a spirit of experimentation with new materials and techniques. Although he demurred identification with any specific movement, he has been identified as a forerunner of practically every post-war artistic development since Abstract Expressionism. His early Combines established an ongoing dialogue between painting and sculpture, between the handmade and the readymade, and between the artist's hand and the mechanically reproduced image. He revolutionised the picture plane through the inclusion of everyday objects, which he termed 'gifts from the street', redefining and expanding the boundaries of what could be considered an artwork.

The Rauschenberg Foundation has announced a suite of exhibitions to mark the artist’s 100th birthday in 2025, as well as dozens of centennial grants and institutional gifts.

Centenary exhibitions will be held at institutions including Museum Brandhorst, Munich; Museum Ludwig, Cologne; Museum of the City of New York; Fundación Juan March, Madrid, M+, Hong Kong; Menil Collection, Houston; and Kunsthalle Krems. An exhibition of the artist’s work will open at Thaddaeus Ropac Paris Marais in October 2025.