Robert Rauschenberg’s Monumental ‘Barge’ Returns to New York’s Guggenheim The museum joins institutions across the city and around the globe marking the artist's 100 birthday.
By Sarah Cascone
Two major New York museums are celebrating the centennial of Robert Rauschenberg’s (1925–2008) birth this fall with exhibitions that spotlight lesser-known chapters of his wildly inventive career.
At the Guggenheim New York, the artist’s monumental silkscreen painting Barge (1962–63) is returning to New York in October for the first time in nearly a quarter century for a show highlighting the museum’s deep Rauschenberg holdings. Just a few blocks uptown, the Museum of the City of New York (MCNY) will showcase his undersung work in photography, particularly how Rauschenberg turned his lens on New York City.
Interestingly, neither exhibition will showcase Rauschenberg’s “Combines,” the series of works incorporating everyday objects and taxidermy animals for which he is perhaps best known, focusing instead on other aspects of his wide-ranging practice.
“His career was so long and varied, and he was so prolific,” Joan Young, the Guggenheim’s senior director of curatorial affairs, told me. She has worked at the museum since Rauschenberg’s last major exhibition there, a 1997 exhibition so massive it filled not only the Fifth Avenue flagship, but two satellite spaces. “It was the largest, biggest exhibition that I’ve ever done.”
The Guggenheim’s new show, announced today, will take up just one gallery. Titled “Life Can’t Be Stopped,” it’s part of a major moment for both Rauschenberg and the Guggenheim, which was one of the first institutions to exhibit his work. The celebrations for the artist’s 100th birthday are being overseen by the Robert Rauschenberg Foundation, which is loaning several works to the Guggenheim and helping present a slew of other exhibitions around the world paying tribute to the centennial. The show is part of the museum’s new “Focus” series, launched last November, which aims to highlight its vast the collection.
